We were looking for a place to go for my husband's birthday and considering his love for all things beer, we settled on a NoDa Brewery.
I emailed back and forth with Suzie, the owner, who was absolutely awesome. She reserved a table for us, organized a tour of the brewery, and was nothing short of helpful in every possible way with accomodating us and dealing with our crazy group. We were supposed to have dinner at the Crepe Cellar but with the gallery crawl going on and CIAA in town, and our group of 8, there was no chance of that happening. Lucky for us, NoDa Brewing has food trucks that come there and that night it was Maki Taco, who makes some pretty delicious Asian tacos of all sorts (I would write a whole other post on these guys, but the short review is that you need Maki Taco in your life. You won't be disappointed.)
Suzie and her husband hooked us up with a brewery tour which my husband loved. The tour was only supposed to last a few minutes but again they accomodated us and let us hang with them longer in the back so my husband could ask all sorts of questions about the brewing process, which they happily answered. They had actually brewed a large batch of Coco Loco that day - a coconut chocolate porter that was super smooth and delicious. This was my drink of choice all night.
Since my cake plans from a local bakery for my husband was totally screwed up (again, worth another post later,) I was SOL, but Suzie came through on this too - she happen to have 8 Irish Car Bomb Cucakes in the back from Fu Man Chu bakery that were OUT OF THIS WORLD, and my husband was a happy man.
Summary: beer + asian taco food truck + irish car bomb desserts = prediction of how my summer Fridays will be spent. Toss in some live music, and it's a done deal. Thank you NoDa Brewing!!