How about a free craft beer with your lunch? Saint Arnold Brewing Company recently unveiled their new lunchroom that is open to the public 11 am to 1:15 pm Monday through Friday. The lunchroom looks a lot like the beer hall that craft beer lovers have been flocking to since the company relocated to their Lyons Avenue location about three years ago. And that’s because it is the same.
What’s new is a handkerchief-sized kitchen where chef Ryan Savoie (left, previously at The Grove and Alto, as well as with Claire Smith’s restaurants) prepares an ever-changing seasonally driven menu that features (duh!) beer and beer ingredients in its preparation. The menu changes every day, but the price stays the same: $17.55 for the two-course lunch, plus $4.62 if you want dessert, plus 92 cents if you want iced tea. The menu for tomorrow, Wednesday, April 17, for example, is spring greens salad with jicama, grapefruit and pecans, followed by carnitas with refried black beans, Spanish rice and tortillas.
The beer, however, is free, and you’re invited to sample the various brews on tap.
Inspiration for the lunchroom came from the brewery’s increasingly busy evening and weekend schedule of special events, which have even included weddings. “We have two or three events here every week,” says Saint Arnold head honcho Brock Wagner. Those events were typically catered by outside catering firms, and it didn’t take Wagner long to gauge the possibilities.
He hired old friend Joe Abuso, owner of Genuine Hospitality Consulting (and, also, a regular contributor to My Table magazine), to shoehorn in a full kitchen behind the bar.
“Brock and I have talked about doing a restaurant together for 15 years,” says Abuso. He outfitted the kitchen and even wrote a number of weekly menus (he was owner/founder of Abuso Catering) until he and Wagner hired Savoie and they discovered the talented chef had plenty of his own great ideas.
“This is like home-cooking,” notes Abuso wryly, “if people cooked better at home.”
The daily lunch special is broadcast via Twitter, and the week’s menu is always posted on the website.