Don’t call what you now get at Edmund’s Oast Brewing Co. (EOBC) “bar food.”
Chef Alex Yellan is cooking up fresh, inventive dishes in the King Street kitchen.
Yellan took the stoves and burners in July, bringing both familiar and further-afield flavors to the brewery’s menu.
Think: charred cauliflower with almond mole, kale salad topped with katsu chicken, falafel wrap with chipotle tahini.
How does one bring a fresh perspective to brewery food?
“It’s certainly a challenge,” Yellan said.
Naturally, some menu items do particularly well at an establishment that specializes in beer.
“Our cheeseburger is our equivalent to the blonde ale [one of EOBC’s most popular brews].
That’s something, despite whatever changes that we’ve made and continue to plan on making, that doesn’t go anywhere,” Yellan said. “We’re not going to shoot ourselves in the foot.”
So yes, you can always get the classic cheeseburger — a smashed thick burger topped with American cheese, lettuce, pickles, onion and burger sauce — but that doesn’t mean that you have to.
You could also order the pastrami burger, topped with house pastrami, which could then be a gateway to the “roast beef ’n’ cheddar,” served with horseradish on an onion roll.
“I enjoy trying to challenge the dining public,” Yellan said. “But there are obviously limitations there from the business standpoint.”
Business as usual (sort of)
EOBC is currently in the midst of an intense renovation project which has turned its outdoor patio area that it shares with neighboring restaurant Rancho Lewis, into a messy, loud construction site.
Things should be back to normal — and better than ever before — later this fall, but in the meantime, the construction project is a bit of a pain.
Yellan said he knows what it’s like to work through growing pains. He’s already learned a lesson about verbiage from the first iteration of his EOBC menu.
“We do a smoked and grilled Thai pork lettuce wrap,” Yellan said. “When we called it ‘grilled pork collar’ we didn’t sell very much of it, but as soon as we called it a ‘Thai lettuce wrap,’ we doubled our sales on it.
“It’s [about] finding how to present these things that we find interesting in a way that’s the most broadly appealing way possible without pandering too much.”
Part of the balance of bringing what Yellan described as “fast” and “craveable” dishes to customers is considering the size and scope of EOBC. When the brewery’s outdoor area isn’t under construction, its size more than doubles the dining room.
When the place is really busy, servers and front of house staff have to be able to deliver food — and explain what dishes are — quickly.
Yellan said that one silver lining to the current construction dilemma is that business has slowed down, allowing the staff to focus on menu development and toying with ideas like themed nights. Noodle night, anyone?
“I like the idea of changing people’s ideas a little bit at a time about what [food] goes with beer,” he said, noting that he’d like to think outside of the box of wings, nachos, pizza and hamburgers.
“We still have wings,” Yellan said. “We don’t do a buffalo wing — we do orange chicken wings. [It’s] finding those little nuggets that kind of help us to feel more excited and change people’s perspective on what is beer-related food.”
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