Beer and Food - Only the Essentials, Please

HI! Remember me? No?!? Well, OK, that's nice. Love you too.

Awhile back, actually in April around the anniversary of my entry to this planet, my brother and his family visited us. To celebrate my birthday, we decided to go out for the night, leaving the kids with a wonderful babysitter. The destination: Birch and Barley. It has an excellent beer selection and good food, too.

So, I will be honest; I have no idea what beers I had anymore. That is the downside. The upside is that they almost always have five, FIVE, different kinds of cask/living ale on tap. FIVE. That is impressive. I know that almost every beer we had was great. One of the beers, Akavitt Porter was ridiculously strong, sweet, but memorable...mostly because of the strength and sweetness. I HIGHLY recommend Birch and Barley, and especially the upstairs bar ChurchKey, if you are looking for a great, but often pricey, beer selection in DC.

Regarding the food, the taste of each dish--yes, I tried all four--was very good. (You like that description, don't you? 'Very good, yes, it was very good.' What do you want me to do? Wax all food-snobbish?) We had the venison loin, pork cheeks, duck breast, and seafood tagliatelle. All were, here it is, very good. Check out the dinner menu.

The main drawbacks - this place is a bit upscale for some, so the bill will be high, the food portions are probably smaller than most would like, and the wait for some items may be more than one would like as well. The pushforwards (what is the opposite of drawback anyway?) are a fantastic beer selection and great taste in each dish.

DAMN! I almost forgot about the bread. It, too, was very flavorful and a welcome surprise. The bread plate (gratis after you sit down) included pretzel bread(?) with beer mustard, cinnamon raisin bread, and kalamata olive bread. There may have been more, but I do not remember.

I recommend it - here is the location:

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