And then a bartender tried to pull a fast one on a beer judge

Okay, so I was eye-rolled by a Mean Girl at Tender Greens. Now let me tell you about the time I wanted to stand up and say “Do you know who this is?” to a bartender/manager who is probably as unhappy as disgruntled-barista-turned-cannibal Gareth from The Walking Dead (spoiler alert: RIP).

Most couples probably have many unspoken rules. One of mine is that I will try a restaurant T picks once, but then I get to decide if I never ever go back. I usually pick the restaurants because, you know, that’s kind of what I do. I have a food blog (HAHAHAHA…. I mean, have you seen how often I post??) and I Instagram a lot of food pics and I Tweet and stuff. If finding and judging good food paid as much as my day job, I’d switch in a heart beat.

Anyway, we were checking out O’Sullivan Bros Brewing in Scripps Ranch/Mira Mesa (over by the Trader Joe’s) and by the time I wanted dinner, Manila Sunset had closed and I wasn’t about to spend all our money at Gyu Kaku, so T suggested we try Bruski. Bruski has beer and burgers and sandwiches and stuff. I assumed because they have an extensive bottle list and, like, a bunch of taps they would be staffed by people who knew beer. Or enough about beer to not make me cock my head at an angle like a confused puppy.

T is a beer judge; a certified beer judge. Mainly for homebrewing competitions, but sometimes he judges professional beers. I say this not to brag (even though his beer knowledge is impressive and has rubbed off on me to the point that I sound impressive to not-big-beer-people) but to tell you that we’re not dealing with some dude off the street who knows he likes “dark beer” and “not hoppy beer” or whatever. He also likes sours, which I find to be an acquired taste. I, personally, am not a fan of them but I can appreciate the style and have tasted enough to know when something is a sour ale and when it’s just beer-gone-wild (which, I guess, can technically result in a sour beer).

So, T orders Monk’s Café, which is a Flemish Sour Ale. I can tell you it’s tart/sour, more than lemon-tart, kind of like balsamic vinegar sour. It has a little sweetness, but it kind of makes your mouth pucker. I can also tell you that it is not supposed to taste like someone made a Long Island Iced Tea with raspberry iced tea, Coke, and beer, which is what this particular glass tasted like. We all taste it, we all decide it doesn’t taste right, so T asks the server if he could pour a new glass or a taste in case the lines were dirty and just needed to be flushed.  He takes the glass away and talks to this other guy behind the bar and comes back and says he can’t do that because Other Guy tasted it from the tap and said it tastes fine, that it’s supposed to taste like that, it’s a mild sour ale.

Um. No. You might be able to get away with that when dealing with some guy who came in to watch the game and didn’t know what he was ordering. That guy might believe you and just drink it and then think he doesn’t like Monk’s Café. But even I know Monk’s Café doesn’t taste like that and I wouldn’t consider it to be a “mild sour”. At this point, Bruski has lost all credibility as a beer joint with me and I’m over it. I get that not all servers know beers, but if some manager-type is going to state that we (the customer) are wrong about how a beer is supposed to taste, he should at least bring some back up beyond “it’s supposed to taste like that”.

So, T orders a Palm ale, which tastes flat and a little like licking the inside of a can. Yay.

We also ordered burgers, which were fine. I ordered a BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger that came suspiciously un-sauced, but whatever. The fries were completely mediocre, like as Sysco-fied as fries come, to the point that I didn’t even eat most of them and wasn’t even contemplating taking them home for the chickens.

And we didn’t even get out in time to shop at Trader Joe’s before they closed.

So: Bruski has been tried and now I don’t ever have to go there again. Boo, Bruski. I’m sure lots of people in Scripps Ranch are happy to have a burger and beer joint, but I am definitely not one of them.

This concludes my complaining and picture-less posting (for now). I do have some tasty meals to tell you about, so let’s see if I can get those out before the end of the year!