Broadly speaking, beer gets no respect. Oh sure, every once in a while, a food guru, greatly daring, tells us it’s all right to pop a brew with barbecue, or even (thrills! chills!) with Thai food. But apart from Garrett Oliver (author of the eloquent food-with-beer book The Brewmaster’s Table), none of the culinary conventicle that decides what upscale Americans eat and drink really seems to think beer is in the same class as wine as an accompaniment to fine food.
Seattle is a more enlightened place than most in this regard. We have at least a dozen pubs that put as much effort into their food programs as their draft lineups. But with few exceptions, their menus aren’t exactly adventurous. Now, glory be and hallelujah, there’s an eatery that could have been created specifically to prove that with the right food, hops and barley can make as beautiful music as any grape ever grown.
It’s no surprise that Brouwer’s Cafe takes its beer ultraseriously: It was created to the specifications of the beer-obsessives who run Bottleworks, the Wallingford storefront temple of beer fundamentalism, Belgian branch. What is surprising—astonishing, really—is how utterly serious they’ve been in pushing their vision into new areas, culinary and architectural.
Let’s take the architecture first. From outside, just another unassuming Fremont warehouse, the interior of a former broom-and-brush factory has been transformed into a SkyChurch celebrating food, drink, and companionship. One long side of the airy light-filled room boasts an organ-stop array of more than 40 taps dispensing, along with a dozen other imported drafts and 20 or so domestics, no fewer than 16 weird and wonderful varieties of Belgian brew. Main-floor tables can be rearranged to seat almost any configuration of visitors, while those who prefer to be exclusive can climb to a spacious balcony. The materials—stone, metal, and wood—provide an ambience both stark and sumptuous.
Once your beer and food are served, though, you may have little attention to spare for ambience. Most of the items on the menu are things you’d find in Belgian beer boîtes, though some betray a distinct Northwest provenance: the salad of spinach, onion, goat cheese, and toasted barley, for example, dressed in walnut vinaigrette ($6), or the startlingly good cold string beans in caper-mustard sauce ($7). Even humble Belgian fries come with a choice of four different sauces—homemade mayo, aïoli, tartar, chipotle—and in three portion sizes ($3, $5, or $6) to suit your appetite. (Tell your buddy to order his own and stop poaching yours.) But don’t stop there; at least try the gratinéed endive with proscuitto, Gruyère, and breadcrumbs ($6) or the scalloped potatoes laced with leeks ($5), both served in portions ample for two.
Main dishes are substantial and, with one exception, stellar. The star of the menu is the bowl of mussels poached in beer, aromatic vegetables, and cream ($14). If you don’t sop up every last drop of sauce with the bread provided for the purpose, you don’t know what’s good for you. The beer-marinated steak ($14) with fries is pretty darn good, though a little pricey to our way of thinking. A better deal is the waterzooi ($12), a kind of upside-down chicken pot pie with puff-pastry crust. The beer-battered cod and chips ($12) may be the most delicious in Seattle. I look forward to trying again the cafe’s carbonnade ($12), the beer- based Belgian version of beef stew, but not until the kitchen has learned just how much long, slow braising it takes to turn dry tough nuggets of beef into meltingly tender flavor-bombs.
I won’t tantalize you by plowing through the appetizer and sandwich lineup. Suffice it to say that even food lovers who don’t much care for beer owe it to themselves to visit Brouwer’s at least once. To judge by the crowds I see there every night, the rest of you hardly need my encouragement.
Brouwer’s Cafe, 400 N. 35th St., 206-267-2437. FREMONT 11 a.m.–10 p.m. daily, bar to close (usually 2 a.m.)
