Barley
Brothers
204-772-2337
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BarleyBrosWpg
Twitter: @BarleyBrosWpg
November,
2013
If
I was 20 years younger, I would be here every week. The sports screens and the vibrant atmosphere
would have been enough of a draw, but adding great beer to the menu would have
been the trump card. Today, I’m a little
too old for the dining room din and the frantic crowds—but I’m not too old for
great beer!
By
far, Barley Brothers has the best beer selection in the city, and I’m not
talking about the Labatt’s crap; in fact, I don’t think you’ll find a Labatt’s
or Molson’s product on the premises.
Instead, you’ll find 50-ish selections of beers, covering the spectrum
from lagers, to wheats, to ales, to bitters, to stouts, and more. If you remotely like beer, there’s something
for you here; if you don’t like beer, what are you doing here?
If
you can’t make up your mind, they have sampler packs of four available. This is a good way to get a broad sampling of
delicious beers, and do a side-by-side of your favourites. For you true beer heads, they offer you beer
passports to track the appearance, nose and palette of each beer you
sample. Again, 20 years ago, I would
have sampled each and every beer, and had a complete passport with their descriptions;
today, I’m as much about the beer as I am about the food.
Barley
has a complete selection of the usual bar-grub, with a few haute-table
surprises. The oysters on the half-shell
come with a beer broth poured into the shells.
When it comes to raw oysters, I’m an absolute purist. Why would you want to taint the delicate and
delicious nature of the mollusc? Just
leave me alone with my oysters, with perhaps a drop of lemon juice! Although the beer foam is quite mild, it does
not complement or contrast the oyster; it simple overpowers it. We ended up pouring the beer off the shell
before slurping.
By
contrast, the Beer and Bison Bourguignon perfectly combines the flavour of the
bison with a lovely gravy, enhanced by the depth of the beer. This delicious dish leaves you wanting for
more after you gobble up the tender bison chunks. The house-made beer bread would normally be
the perfect conduit for soaking up the remaining sauce. However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a
dense bread before in my life (except for the time my cousin used a can of
yeast, instead of a packet!). This slab
weighs about two pounds and has the consistency of limestone—there is no way
this bread will soak up any sauce. I’m
better off licking the bowl.
If
you’re more into the pub-grub, the poutine starts with McDonald’s-like fries
that are neither greasy nor heavy. The
beer gravy too tastes quite light and flavourful. Hefty pieces of curds complete this competent
intro.
No
pub appetiser list would be complete without chicken wings, and Barleys has
some unique flavours. It bothers me that
places like Smitty’s charges $0.25 per wing, but gives you wings that could
have come from robins. Not so here—the
plump and juicy wings have only a tinge of smoke but lots of taste. They don’t fool around as the hot wings taste
genuinely hot. Today, you find Sriracha
everywhere and you can find it with your wings too; it’s a nicely made sauce
that adds a zing to the wings.
For
me, beer isn’t complete without a burger, and they have plenty from which to
choose. The chicken burger comes with a
grilled piece of breast meat, nestled among crisp and fresh vegetables. Although the meat comes nicely seared on the
outside, it’s overcooked and dry on the inside.
Part of the problem is the thinness of the meat. No chicken has a breast this thin, which
means they either hammered out the meat or butterfly-sliced it to stretch it
out.
The
beef burgers sit on the opposite end of the thickness scale. The patties measure in close to an inch thick
and if you add the vegetables and bun, this burger tops off at a jaw-breaking
five inches tall! Since the sirloin
patty is so thick, I imagine it to be almost impossible to overcook, and yet,
here it is. Similar to the chicken, the
outside has wonderful searing but the inside is also overcooked and dry.
There
are some hits and misses here but regardless of what food item you order, I
suggest you order it quickly. By no
fault of the server (who is quick to replenish the drinks), it takes a while
for the food to come. If you’re like me
and you want to take your time to sample beers, that’s perfectly dandy—but if
you just want a quick lager with your burger, you might end up grumpy as you
wait. That just strengthens my resolve
that you should throw out your watch, sample some beers, and not care when your
food arrives. I could sit here all
night—now how do I turn the clock back 20 years?
****
/5
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