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| - NOTE: I received a very condescending response from the owner after my initial review (updated below). I contacted the owner directly and we have reached a better understanding, but it wasn't the right way to respond to an unhappy customer and I still can't recommend this place based on my own experiences.
REVIEW:
This was the biggest let-down I have experienced in a long time!
I was enamored by the crazy number of positive reviews online (mostly employees and friends, I'm guessing?) and convinced my wife and a couple friends to join me for dinner and beers here.
I really loved the idea of the place and I like to support local businesses. The location was close to me, the simple menu was enticing and the beer selection was more than adequate for what turned out to be a fairly small place.
Unfortunately, our experience didn't live up to the internet hype in the slightest.
I must say that the Steak Chimichurri Tacos were fantastic. Perhaps a tad over seasoned, but with a little sour cream and pico thrown on top, this is the one dish we tried tonight that I might come back for if the rest of the experience wasn't so bad.
The Carne Asada Tacos, on the other hand, looked similar, but were quite bland and uninspiring.
The beans and rice that accompanied both of the taco dishes were truly a sad affair. I'm not sure what seasoning they use on the rice, but none of the four of us liked it. The beans were nothing more than a scoop of black beans straight from a can...no salt, no seasoning, barely warm.
Another item we ordered was the Not-chos (get it? Nachos). In my opinion, this was a culinary failure! It's a bowl filled with chips and topped with crumbles of the most dry and tasteless machaca beef you have ever put in your mouth. There was barely enough cheese to taste on the first layer and no cheese beneath that, just a big bowl of plain, bland tortilla chips. This item should be a free appetizer for the table while you wait, not a $10 plate!
The last food item we ordered was the SW Putin. I was most excited for this one and it was easily the second best dish on the table. HOWEVER, the fries were SO salty that the four of us had to take turns eating it. We're not talking about typical "salted" fries here, we're talking about "salt encrusted" fries. Too bad.
Lastly and perhaps most importantly: The drinks.
I'm a huge beer fan, so I tried 7 of their beers and ciders, mostly house, but also a few others.
The biggest complaint we had (as noted by everyone at my table) was how warm the beers were. One was nearly room temp! The rest were cool, but certainly not at all cold.
The server checked the lines for us and brought back a sample to confirm the temp was now working properly, but we still got charged for all the warm beers we had been given.
The BRI house beers we tried were generally good, but I hesitate to suggest that any were great. We didn't try any of the IPA styles since none of us were in an IPA mood.
That said, their house selection is better than most breweries' and encompassed porters, saisons, dubbels, etc. in addition to the prominent IPA lineup that is popular these days. Yet, while they're certainly on the right track with many of these styles, most varieties felt like they still needed something "more" to be perfect (i.e. more body on the tongue for the porter, etc). Perhaps things were thrown off by the fact that the beers weren't served nearly cold enough.
Between exceptionally disappointing food, beers that left us a bit wanting and service that was more minimal than either good or bad, I can't in my heart of hearts recommend this place to anyone else.
It's a newer establishment and may still be experiencing some growing pains, but there are too many other really solid brew houses around to waste more time and money at The Beer Research Institute. Sadly, not recommended!
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