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Craft Beer Passport: The Grapefruit Moon (“Have you heard from Danielle?”)

Craft Beer Passports in hand, I’m visiting Toronto bars and writing about the experience. Today: reminiscing at the Grapefruit Moon.

I haven’t seen Anne since Christmas, so we decide to meet for drinks. The Grapefruit Moon is convenient, we agree. 6:00.

We sit on the patio, which is nice, but the young family sitting next to us severely limits the kinds of conversations we can have. We look at the charming drinks menu, written in chalk on a small tablet, and Anne decides on a Steamwhistle. Trusty, safe, reliable Anne. I decide on the thing with the neatest name, and Anne dares me to order it as fancily as I can.

Black Oak Ten Bitter Years

The Black Oak Ten Bitter Years has received consistent praise from beer critics, including the title of Canada’s best Imperial IPA. I have some thoughts too. Specifically, I think that the Black Oak Ten Bitter Years (hereafter: BOTBY) tastes like someone took bitter beer and poured fruit punch into it. The bitterness and the sweetness clash like something terrible. My mouth curles up every time I take a sip, which Anne uses to great comedic effect. As the glass touches my lips, she says, “Have you heard from Danielle?” So BOTBY has something going for it.

The food menu at the Grapefruit Moon looks a little expensive for bar fare, so we call it a night after one beer and a couple hours of conversation each. Anne is doing well, by the way. She’s dramaturging a show in the fall.

Will I return to the Grapefruit Moon?

I spend too much time around children at bars in my day job*. No, thank you.

 

*This is a joke.

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Craft Beer Passport: Victory Cafe (“It’s really festive upstairs”)

Craft Beer Passports in hand, I’m visiting Toronto bars and writing about the experience. Today: a vignette at the Victory Cafe, 581 Markham Street..

LOUIS: Okay, so let’s get started. We should all, um say something to introduce ourselves.
SHAYNA: Do they have anywhere to charge my phone? I can’t see an outlet.
LOUIS: I’m Louis and I, uh, don’t know anything about beer.
SHAYNA: I’m Shayna and I like beer?
REBECCA: I’m Rebecca and I don’t drink beer.
LOUIS: Okay, great. Let’s start by talking about this place.
SHAYNA: It’s nice.
LOUIS: It has nice décor. It has a good ambience.
SHAYNA: I like the pictures on the walls.
LOUIS: And they have wooden frames.
REBECCA: Right. But it’s kind of swampy in here.
SHAYNA: True.
REBECCA: And it’s quiet.
A server comes by to take our order. He ends conversations by saying “World peace”, which we find endearing. He tells us that Dennis* will be our server instead and leaves. Dennis does not say “World peace”. Dennis is kind of grumpy.
The passport beers to choose from are all from Mill Street Brewery. Shayna orders the Organic and I order the Amber.
LOUIS: I guess let’s start with the colour?
SHAYNA:  Mine is nice.
LOUIS: So is mine. Okay, now to drink them.
SHAYNA: Mine is nice.
LOUIS: Mine is… interesting. It’s kind of strong, I guess? But it tastes pretty normal. I don’t know.
SHAYNA: Mine is okay. Wanna trade? Shayna drinks some of Louis’s Amber. Oh, it’s strong. I like mine more.
LOUIS: Yours is really mild.
SHAYNA: Yeah, it’s – this is what you would drink if you wanted to get drunk. (Side note: this does not represent an official endorsement from blogUT. But unofficially: totally!)
REBECCA: And my water has a really nice oaky flavor to it. A good year. A good year for tap water.
Our food arrives. Rebecca and I have ordered French fries and an avocado & spinach salad. Shayna has ordered nothing, because she is a vegan and keeps kosher is just the worst person to go to a restaurant with.
LOUIS: The fries are nice. A nice balance of crispness to softness.
REBECCA: They’re okay. I wish they were a bit longer.
LOUIS: Me too. But the ones that are long are really good.
REBECCA: The salad is okay. The avocado is under-ripe.
LOUIS: The dressing is nice?
REBECCA: The dressing is nice.
SHAYNA: Returns from the washroom. There’s some really sweet graffiti in the women’s washroom. Someone changed some things to be nicer things.
LOUIS: How long have we been the only people in this section? Were we not supposed to sit here?
SHAYNA: It’s really festive upstairs.
LOUIS: We are literally alone here.

Some final thoughts: Victory Café is in a great location, but it seems otherwise uncompetitive. The food wasn’t very good – certainly not reflective of the cost – and we were seated, for some reason, in a room that emptied within half an hour of our arrival.
The beer was pretty good. The Organic was the favourite of the two, and we noted its mild, easy taste. But Mill Street is everywhere in this city, so it’s certainly no reason to come back to this venue.

Will I return to Victory Café?
It’s convenient, so probably, yes.
 

*Not his real name. 

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Craft Beer Passport: Let’s Go on an Adventure!

Toronto is a fantastic city, if you’re the kind of person who’s eager to go out and enjoy it. Taking in Toronto takes a kind of energy, a sort of “yes, let’s!” mentality that some people have and some people don’t. Unfortunately, in most cases I don’t.  I’m not what some might call a social butterfly. I’m really more of a social sloth, friendly and entertaining but not in any way proactive, content to lie in a tree and let fungus grow on my back (wait, what?). It’s not my greatest feature, and I’ve been working on it since the Gamecube days.
That’s why I jumped at the chance to grab a couple of Craft Beer Passports. With a Craft Beer Passport, you can drink a craft beer for $2.00 at any or all of the participating locations. The beers are as varied as the bars, which go as far east as Greenwood and as far as west as The Junction. It’s a great way to force myself to see the city and, because I have an extra passport, to coerce some friends to join me.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be ​hitting up as many of the spots on my passport as I can. I should warn you that I know nothing about beer, but I’m definitely willing to learn. And if you follow along on my little adventure, you might also learn a little: about beer, Toronto, and friendship (d’awww).