(Yes, I know that the title of this post is “Draw a Glass” and not “Raise a Glass” — you’ll see why shortly).
Last week was an important anniversary that I missed: One year since the opening of Tacoma’s Quite-Quite-Fantastic taproom, Pint Defiance.
It is an excellent place to pick up some bottles, have a pint, or fill a growler with a rather tasty beverage. Before Carrie caught the preggers (and before I stopped drinking out of solidarity) we tended to go there whenever we needed to bring good beer to a dinner or party or what-have-you.
If you’ve never been there Chandler O’Leary did a couple of excellent drawings of the interior so you’ll know what to expect when you DO go there (and you should).
Chandler O’Leary, by the way, is a local Tacoma artist who has a very cool blog called “Drawn the Road Again” where she makes quite excellent illustrations of her many travels.
She also runs Anagram Press, a Tacoma letterpress printing company. You should really check that out. Chandler also just happened to design the Pint Defiance Logo. Plus, she and a friend of hers are the team behind the “Dead Feminists” series of prints.
The end of Summer 2012 has been a rather unusual one for me in that it involved a high number of outings. Especially weekend outings. I actually missed some Fools Play to do some of these. Here, very briefly, are all that I can remember:
“Mystery Day Trip,” about which I am going to write extensively soon (stay tuned).
Camping: Yes, I went camping. We went to Millersylvania State Park, which is just South of Olympia. We went there in large part so that I could sneak away Saturday night and perform Fools Play, then sneak back afterwards and continue the camping. I really enjoy the “sitting around the campfire” and “hanging out with 8 or 9 friends all day” parts of camping. Including some rather amusing obstacle-riddled croquet. I don’t so much enjoy the “sleeping in a tent” part of camping.
Marrow: For our 8th wedding anniverserary, Carrie & I went back to Marrow for the first time this year. They were offering a special three-course menu, so we opted for that and also threw in a couple extra courses. Here’s all what we had:
Wild mushroom and sorrel salad. Very tasty.
Salmon belly tartare covered with fish roe on an amazing dill cream cheese sauce, and served with crispy wonton shaped like a cornucopia, out of which the chunks of raw salmon were pouring. The play of all the textures was outstanding, and the flavors all really went well together.
Chicken fried sweetbreads, which were like smooth and buttery chicken nuggets.
Oxtail, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite meats, especially the ways they prepare it at Marrow.
A boiling hot pear & gorgonzola tart. The pungent/sweet/salty combination worked really well, once the thing cooled down enough to actually touch it.
Marrow is good.
Birthdays: My sister and her stepdaughter both had birthdays within about a month of each other.
Apple Day: Carrie & I returned to the childhood home of Marvel’s X-men’s female clone of Wolverine (X-23) for our 6th annual Apple Day, wherein we crushed apples into fresh apple cider with the help of an apple press, and had a potluck dinner wherein we ate too much delicious food.
Cabin & Leavenworth: Carrie & I (& Suki) once again rented our favorite cabin up on the Skykomish river and introduced her parents to it. After we checked out we continued over the mountain to hang out in Leavenworth for a while. It was kinda hazy because of all the wildfires on that side of the mountain, and indeed we had to go back up and through Highway 2 to get home because the normal way we would have gotten home (down Highway 97 to Cle Elum then back via I-90) was so smoky that it was not a viable alternative.
Pancake Party: Just yesterday we went to an almost-all-day Pancake Party at the Skylark. More on that soon as well…
Um, I think that’s about it. There were also various trips to Pint Defiance and one to the Parkway Tavern. This post was meant more to help me remember everything than it was meant to be entertaining.
Several years ago a delightful (and very successful) little restaurant opened in North Tacoma, full of nummy sammitches and foodstuffs. It was called The Rosewood Café, and was owned/operated by Tacomen Barry & Renee Watson. And it was good.
Then in January they sold the Rosewood for apparently a rather tidy sum. The new owners said they’d try not to mess with a good thing, and so the Rosewood has continued much in the same successful vein.
The Watsons decided to relax. That lasted only a few months.
Barry, apparently itching for some action, began guest-bartending at The Red Hot on 6th Ave. And soon a plan was publicized: The Watsons were going to open a new business. Not a restaurant this time. A specialty beer store and taproom.
The place is pretty much exactly how I pictured it. There’s a wall of fridges with some 600 beers in them. Then just past that is a bar with 10 taps and a handful of tables for seating. It’s a cross between awesome and adorable.
We shared an apricot cider and a “Strong Start” Belgian beer, which was specially made as a limited edition for Pint Defiance by the brewers at E-9.
Apricot Cider & “Strong Start” Belgian Beer
The Strong Start was amazing: dark and rich but without that horribly bitter bite that I can’t stand. It was also such a limited edition that you couldn’t fill up your growler with it. So we instead filled up our growler with a milk stout (also dark & delicious) from a Puyallup brewery. The growler, by the way, was our old growler that we’d gotten at The Rosewood, complete with the little tattooed cowboy emblazoned on it. If you don’t have a Rosewood growler, though, don’t worry: they made tons of Pint Defiance growlers for the opening. We also got a handful of other beers (we’re going camping this weekend after all).
And it was good.
We look forward to getting our specialty beers (and enjoying a pint) at Pint Defiance for many years to come. So can you!
Pint Defiance
2049 Mildred Street West
Tacoma, WA 98466
11:00 AM to 9:00 PM every day
And On My Wall!
