Nothing short of a blackout could compound
the heat and humidity of summer in the city more than Mayor Rudy’s
ban on outdoor boozing.
Now we’re not talking about sitting on the stoop getting smashed
on a ’40’ of Budweiser here (not that we’re denouncing it, either).
But an ice cold beer, fresh from the tap, and preferably a microbrew
(translated: a beer with flavor) can perform miracles on a hot
summer afternoon or evening the likes of which no air conditioner
can replicate.
So while the simple pleasure of strolling along a street fair,
cup of beer in hand, as your boyfriend, girlfriend or best friend
drags you from booth to booth is a thing of the past – at least
for now – there are some oases in Brooklyn that cater to those
of us who enjoy their beer al fresco. Here’s a few of them.
The Brooklyn Brewery
79 North 11th St. at Berry Street,
(718) 486-7422, www.BrooklynBrewery.com.
Brooklyn’s largest microbrewer, The Brooklyn Brewery, was perhaps
the hardest hit by the city’s ban on alcohol at public events.
The ban effectively cancelled the Williamsburg brew-house’s annual
block party. (What’s the point in a brewery throwing a street
fair if no one can drink their product?)
But the brewery, which proves with every batch that beer can
be much more than a device for delivering alcohol to the bloodstream,
came up with a solution: a party of a much smaller scale outside
the brewery on North 11th Street (also know as "Brewery
Row") between Berry Street and Wythe Avenue.
The July 7 outdoor event will celebrate the fifth anniversary
of the company’s Williamsburg plant with a grand-style cookout.
For $30, ticket holders can enjoy all the grilled chicken, burgers,
bratwurst, hot dogs and sides they can handle from 1 pm to 6
pm. There will also be live music from local bands Cocktail Angst,
The Blackwater Shoals and Dem Brooklyn Bums, and everyone gets
a commemorative T-shirt.
Most importantly, you’ll be able to wash it all down with fresh
Brooklyn beer. There is a limited number of tickets, which can
be purchased in advance through www.TotalBeer.com, or you can
take your chances and buy tickets at the door the day of the
event.
The Brooklyn line, some of the finest ales and lagers in the
country, was developed by brewmaster Garrett Oliver, who also
designed the Brooklyn plant. It includes the brewery’s flagship
label, Brooklyn Lager, which is brewed from a pre-Prohibition
recipe that dates back to when Brooklyn had no less than 48 breweries.
There is also Brooklyn Pilsner, Brooklyn Pennant Ale ’55, a tribute
to the World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers team, Brooklyn East India
Pale Ale, Brooklyn Brown Ale and Brooklyner Weisse, a Bavarian
style wheat beer, as well as a host of seasonal and Oliver’s
special brews.
The lager has a full-bodied caramel-malt finish, while the pilsner
is lighter and crisper and the brown a deep, rich chocolate finish,
but not nearly as heavy as a stout.
Brooklyn Brewery was founded in 1986 by former Associated Press
reporter Steve Hindy, himself a home-brewer, and the downstairs
neighbor in a Park Slope brownstone, Tom Potter, who was a lending
officer with Chase Manhattan Bank.
The brewery is now open to the public every Saturday afternoon
from noon to 5 pm for free tours of the brewery, samples of beer
or to just knock back a few in the spacious indoor Tasting Room,
which is set up like picnic grounds with long benches and tables.
Chips and pre-made sandwiches are also available. Pints can be
purchased with a Brooklyn Brewery token ($3).
On Friday and Saturday nights, from 6 pm to 10 pm, the Tasting
Room hosts live music from local bands with no cover and the
same $3 pints.
– NS
Teddy’s Bar & Grill
96 Berry St. at North Eighth
Street, (718) 384-9787.
Just a few blocks from Brooklyn Brewery is a real throwback of
a tavern called Teddy’s, which has been continuously serving
the Williamsburg community since 1887.
Originally named Peter Doelgers after a local brew of the time,
the large bar and restaurant has been known as Teddy’s for more
than 50 years.
The bar features a large selection of beers on tap, including
a couple of Brooklyn brews, of course, as well as bottled beers
and drink specials – like the 7-ounce frozen margarita for just
$1.99 throughout the summer.
But taking things back outside, Teddy’s has a gated outdoor seating
area of about a dozen tables with waiter service. The quiet street
(you could almost hear a pin drop on a late Saturday afternoon)
is the perfect host for the outdoor area as you can relax with
your beer and some food and friends. While you don’t have to
order food to sit at an outdoor table, it is a point that will
be impressed upon you and your party during Teddy’s busier hours.
The menu includes a pretty eclectic variety of ethnic foods,
with an emphasis on Spanish, Mexican and Latin American dishes,
but you can’t beat the burgers and waffle fries.
There is no-cover live entertainment most Tuesday, Wednesday
and Thursday nights and DJ Culture spins Friday and Saturday
nights. According to Teddy’s co-owner Felice Kirby, the likes
of Cassandra Wilson and Joan Osborn have graced Teddy’s original
19th century column stage.
The bar area also has a couple of TVs for sports viewing and
the large wood bar is mighty inviting, but on a nice summer day,
give Teddy’s outdoor seating a try first.
– NS
The Gate
321 Fifth Ave. at Third Street,
(718) 768-4329.
Out on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Third Street, across the
street from J.J. Byrne Park, The Gate’s outdoor patio is like
a magnet to passersby.
The red and green floodlights that shine above it, and the din
of conversation coming from behind its bamboo fences attract
potential bar-goers – peeking at those already enjoying a cold
brew. With a line of flower boxes hung along its perimeter, the
patio even entices neighbors on a nightly stroll, who, while
they might have been planning to return to their own backyard,
all of a sudden decide to forgo the comforts of home for the
benefit of a well-stocked bar.
The Gate’s lineup of draught beer is large enough to put a different
beer on each of its patio’s 18 tables, and then some. Maybe it’s
the smell of the hops that attracts them.
The bar has more than 20 beers on tap, ranging from a full array
of Brooklyn Brewery beers, a handful of New England and Mid-Atlantic
micro-brews, and an adequate selection of major European brews.
Draught beer prices range from $4 to $5.50. The bar also serves
several types of reasonably priced domestic and imported bottled
beers and a few specialty delights, like a Chimay Reserve and
Delirium Nocturnum, a Belgian import.
The Gate’s outdoor tables offer, you guessed it, a refreshing
alternative to the bar’s sometimes stuffy and noisy interior.
Only this cliche is for real. Although, the plastic chairs and
metal tables are far less comfortable and intimate than the bar’s
stable of wooden benches and booths, the patio provides the perfect
rationale to head to a bar on a sunny afternoon – without the
guilt.
Even on a damp night, what first appears to be merely adequate
overflow space can take on a lively atmosphere of its own, as
long as there are a few rags on hand to wipe down the seats.
The patio could stand to borrow a few of the creature bar comforts
provided to patrons who decide to stay inside, like music and
perhaps even a dart board, but these added features might somehow
draw the ire of residents along the neighborhood’s sleepy side
streets. And that is not the kind of attention The Gate is looking
to attract.
– JS
The Brazen Head
228 Atlantic Ave. at Court Street,
(718) 488-0430.
The Brazen Head, on Atlantic Avenue just east of Court Street,
is a little off the beaten path, and so can at times be a bit
quiet. Open less than a year, it is located on a quiet block,
with a bail bondsman and a couple of vacant storefronts for neighbors.
Inside is a long wooden bar, brass fixtures, 17 beers on tap,
including Sierra Nevada, Stella Artois and Bass Ale, and two
hand-drawn cask beers, which are kept at room temperature and
drawn directly from the barrel. There is also a long list of
single malt whiskys. The only food to be had comes from a bowl
of nuts on the bar.
The bar draws some in-the-know neighborhood types who may be
turned off by some of the more crowded, trendier bars along Atlantic
Avenue, Smith Street and Court Street. It fills up in the evening
with the after-work crowd, often in their 20s and 30s, sometimes
with their kids in tow. A jukebox on one wall is chock-full of
hits by ’80s groups like The Cure and The Eurythmics.
The patio, newly renovated and virtually unused, contains just
four tables with umbrellas, but it’s room enough to escape from
the smoke inside. Surrounded by fences decorated simply with
a string of orange plastic lights with smiling faces, the patio
backs onto a vacant lot, and beyond that, beer signs hanging
in the windows of the Cobble Heights Beer Distributors on Pacific
Street.
The Brazen Head is open Monday through Saturday, from noon to
4 am, and Sunday, noon to 2 am.
– WF
Liberty Heights Tap Room
34 Van Dyke St. at Dwight Street,
(718) 246-8050.
When Park Slope Brewing Company founder Steve Deptula decided
in 1997 to get rid of his two brew pubs in Park Slope and Brooklyn
Heights and concentrate on brewing, bottling and kegging his
microbrews for local distribution, he chose Red Hook as his new
base of operations.
This year, however, he decided to return to the brew pub business,
expanding his Red Hook interest to include the Liberty Heights
Tap Room on Van Dyke Street. Seemingly in the middle of nowhere
for people not acquainted with the industrial charm of the southern
Red Hook waterfront area, the large bar could be confused with
an oasis on a particularly hot day.
Liberty Heights offers four craft brews, all made on the premises,
served fresh from the tap. There’s the Park Slope Premium Pils,
Park Slope Nut Brown Ale, Park Slope Pale Ale and the newest
creation from brewmaster Leo Bongiorno (one of Deptula’s partners
along with Chuck Williamson), the Liberty Heights Steamin’ Lager.
The latter is a "steam beer," a lager beer fermented
at an ale temperature, producing a mild, toffee-malt finish.
Despite the expansion, Deptula plans to remain true to his brewery
principles. "I still want the brewing company to be known
as a small-time manufacturer that distributes in the five boroughs,"
he says.
"We want people to come into Liberty Heights Tap Room for
great beer and great brick-oven pizza." The tap room offers
a variety of pizzas, a natural combo with beer, that run $10
to $15. There’s also a jukebox and two pool tables in the back
room.
But back to the theme. Starting July 6, Deptula promises, he
will have his area out back, behind the bar and brewery, ready
with tables for outdoor drinking and dining all summer. By next
summer he hopes to set up a rooftop deck on one of his lower-lying
buildings out back.
It should be a great spot to kick back and relax with a fresh
brew, and by the way, Liberty Heights is downright cheap – offering
Imperial pints (20 ounces) for just $4 and half-pints (10 ounces)
for $2.75.
The tap room is open Tuesday, 4 pm to midnight; Wednesday and
Thursday, 11:30 am to midnight; Friday and Saturday, 11:30 am
to 1 am; and Sunday, 2 pm to midnight. They are closed Mondays.
Oh, and about the name, Deptula says he got it from a message
that he saw stenciled on the concrete columns of the Gowanus
Expressway, driving down Hamilton Avenue away from the Battery
Tunnel, that reads: "Welcome to Liberty Heights, Brooklyn."
The message bears an image of the Statue of Liberty. You can
take advantage of the best view in the city of the old green
girl – just a couple of blocks away, by the water.
– NS
PJ Hanley’s
449 Court St. at Luquer Street, (718) 834-8223.
Located on Court Street, between Fourth Place and Luquer Street,
PJ Hanley’s, a bar-restaurant, has put some finishing touches
to its dining patio that make it a cozy place to spend a summer
night.
Though the exterior of the patio fence is festooned with tiny
pennants advertising beer, the tacky display is offset by the
interior of the patio itself. With canvas umbrellas added to
the hard green plastic tables, and Christmas lights strung along
the shrubbery, the patio has a quirky charm enhanced by its patrons
– families with small children to couples on first dates to clots
of neighborhood friends – dining out in well-pressed shorts and
matching polo shirts.
On busy nights, the patio is reserved for the dinner crowd, but
on slow nights, patrons can sit in the comfortable chairs and
order drinks al fresco. On tap, there is Harp, Guinness, Sam
Adams, Bass, Budweiser, Kilarney’s and Hard Core Cider. In bottles,
Coors Light, Budweiser, Amstel, Heineken, Budwesier.
The bar and restaurant are open from Tuesday through Saturday.
Brunch is offered on Sunday, and lunch on Thursday through Saturdays.
The restaurant, which offers pretty standard bar fare, is open
from 5 pm to 11 pm, Tuesday through Thursday; 5 pm to 11:30 pm,
Friday and Saturday; and from 11:30 am to 10 pm on Sundays.
The bar is open from 10 am to 1 am, Tuesday through Thursday;
10 am to 2 am, Friday and Saturday; and 10 am to midnight on
Sunday.
From June through August, PJ Hanley’s is closed on Mondays.
– RF
