If I could, I would give the Market Garden Brewery four stars for beer and negative two stars for the food. Which explains my two star review.
Visit #1: We were excited to try the beer and some appetizers. Both the brown ale and the tart blanche did not disappoint. Very refreshing on a hot summer evening. The appetizers on the other hand were extremely disappointing. Since we were in a brewery, I HAD to order the pretzel and fully expected a golden, crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, prefectly salted twist of dough. We were instead presented with what looked like a soft demi baguette. It felt like a soft demi baguette - curious texture for either a baguette OR a pretzel. It tasted neither like a baguette nor like a pretzel - simply like very soft, doughy bread. Curiouser and curiouser. The stone ground mustard that it came with lacked any flavor besides tartness. After musing over this unexpected bump in the evening, we decided to order more beer (the pilsner for me and more brown ale for the husband - again, very good) and the currywurst. I had visions of a fantastic WSM bratwurst, expertly cooked and accompanied with the curry ketchup. Instead, we got a very, very bland and soggy brat covered with a decent curry ketchup. I have had brats cooked many ways - boiled in beer, grilled, smoked, baked, slow cooked but I have never had a soggy brat. I did not know what to do with a soggy brat. Bewildered by the turn of events, we looked for an explanation and decided that the fault must surely lie with our overspiced, ethnic palates. And the fact that we had had a fantastic meal at the Pupuseria La Bendicion just a couple of hours ago MUST have skewed our judgement. So we decided to call it a day and come back for a second visit.
Visit #2: This time, we took three friends with us to ensure fair judgement and to assure us that our palates were not to blame. Again, the beers were fantastic - wheat beer, tart blanche, brown ale, pilsner. The food was distressingly disappointing. The meat 'board' was supposed to include beef jerky, slovenian sausage, house made pickles, house cured honey ham and stout mustard. What we got was a plate containing barely half a piece of Czuchraj beef jerky, three or four thin pieces of smoked slovenian sausage, a few pieces of pickled veggies (the green beans were great, everything else was 'meh'), two spoonfuls of what tasted like dried cherries mixed with a teeny tiny bit of stone ground mustard, what looked like one slice of Oscar Mayer deli meat and two pieces of hard as a rock toast. Hard as a rock...I kid you not. In fact, husband spent the next fifteen minutes staring glumly into his beloved brown ale as he bounced a piece of the bread higher and higher off the plate. The strongest emotion generated by the meat 'board' was a heated argument over whether the Oscar Mayer looking meat was turkey or ham or neither. This was the first time I regretted spending $2.20 (my share of the meat board) on food. Needless to say, we did not stay for dinner.
The MGB is located next to the West Side Market. It is so close to the WSM, that it could be considered part of the WSM. How can any self respecting restaurant located this close to one of the best sources of fresh produce and meat in Cleveland serve such food?? How??
*Appalled and accusing look at the MGB*