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were in the area, decided to check out K’s Beverage House & Deli.

short answer: an unsuspecting place in a plaza in the heart of bellevue to get a great sandwich and a great pint. 12 taps? 5 IPA’s on tap when were visited, including a dry-hopped IPA from elysian that was surprising & amazing.

their bottled selection is huge — however, a lot of this stuff has been here for a long time. several of the 12oz bottles we bought had gone bad. i would stick to the fresh stuff.

stopped by Brouwer’s Cafe in the afternoon, for some beer & frites.

let me say, that this place is like the penultimate sophisticated beer bar. the entire place smacks of no-expense-spared kinda excess, in all the good ways. the custom stainless work for the bar back, the taps, the glass washers, the custom coolers that show off the mind-boggling collection of bottled beers. it’s crazy.

it’s like a dotcom kid went crazy with the venture capital and bought all top-of-the-line stuff. let’s hope it doesn’t peter out when the seed money dries up.

from what we hear, that’s not going to happen. the place is crammed at the (times that a bar is normally busy). during the day it’s eerie — it’s like sitting by yourself in an empty warehouse. the poor waitstaff probably logs several miles of walking to serve the disparate customers at the bar, on the patio, and in the back rooms.

if that place is packed at night, i can only imagine the cacophony that would ensue. (we went at around 3:30 in the afternoon, i prefer my beer with a dash of silence).

an amazing selection of beers from belgium and all around the united states — unusual ones like allagash from maine, and goose island from chicago, spring to mind, in addition to the better known california and northwest brewers.

we’ll be back. a lot.

a weekend trip to the Portland area.

a stop at Dick’s Brewing in centralia, WA for lunch on the way down. the adjacent Northwest Sausage & Deli had absolutely amazing food, and the beer couldn’t possibly be fresher. we were very disappointed that they were closed on our trip back (sunday), or we would have been obliged to fill the trunk of the focus up with beer & meat.

dinner at old chicago, a chain who claims to posess “110 taps.” on their website they maintain a laundry list of brews, nearly all of which were not available. (apparently that is the aggregate list for all their locations, not representative of any individual location). the beer menu we were presented with had about a dozen options on tap (and sorely missing the leinenkugel’s that we went there for in the first place!). food was somewhat unique chain-pub fare, with an italian-ish twist on everything. i say, skip it and go someplace more local (see ‘portland brewing’ below).

saturday morning offered a visit to the start of the Oregon Trail Rally. this was an SCCA Pro Rally, there were many cars (mostly subarus) at the rally expose event. We didn’t see any stages — those will be better enjoyed when broadcast on the Speed Channel’s SCCA Pro Rally Coverage.

saturday afternoon meant a drive out the historic cascade highway and around mt. hood. the vista house was chainlinked — we couldn’t get within 40 feet of the building itself. for good reason, it looks like some stupid punkass kids broke some of the beautiful windows.

we stopped for another respite at the mt. hood meadows ski resort, which still had quite a massive amount of snow. the drive itself was somewhat disappointing — in comparison to the north cascades, the only real peaky mountain to be seen down there was mt. hood itself. quite a different experience from driving, say, the mt. loop highway (north of granite falls, WA) or through one of the north cascade passes.

saturday night, dinner at the Portland Brewing Company’s MacTarnahan’s. absolutely amazing food — somewhat of a challenge to a traditional conservative pallette but done in a safe way (yes, an old grump like me enjoyed something called a “torta”). incredible beer, as expected. fell in love with Uncle Otto’s Weissbier, only to learn that they recently STOPPED bottling it. darn! the only complaint i would have is that the place was very crowded and very very noisy, but one has to expect such things as a testament to the good food & good beer mentioned above.

sunday morning, we were definitely ready to get home, get our cat out of hock, and take a nap.

an afternoon road trip to one of our favorite brewpubs.

LaConner Brewing Company (site is ‘offline’ seemingly forever), LaConner, WA. drove out for lunch to see what was left of the Tulip Festival and have some good food and good beer. we weren’t disappointed. apparently everyone was drowning their sorrows that the Tulip season came (and went) early this year, in a pint of Tulip Festival ale. i can’t say i blamed them.

a jaunt through the mountains to a nice touristy town.

we’ve been to leavenworth before. this time, we went to find out if the Leavenworth Pub & Brewery still existed.

turns out, it doesn’t. the space that formerly housed it has been taken over by a respectable italian establishment called Visconti’s who happens to serve Leavenworth Brewery Beer. how’s that possible? well, apparently Leavenworth Brewery Beers are still being produced–in Olympia, Washington, at a brewery called Fish Brewing Co.

That said, we had some italian food and some beer that went east across the mountain passes (just like we did). but both were good, thankfully.

Then we checked out the Gingerbread Factory as we always do when we head over there (in fact, most of the time, it’s the entire excuse for going in the first place). but, it was
closed. and for sale. go figure.

on the way back we stopped at the homefires bakery just outside of town, picked up some good bread & cookies. then back across the pass westerly, as it started to snow around 2800ft.

a trip to portland to see the roses.

on this trip to Portland, we revisited the Portland Internation Rose Test Garden (PIRTG) and there were a lot more roses than our trip in february (when there were none whatsoever). we also visited the Peninsula Park Rose Garden which i read somewhere was larger in area than the other, but it’s not maintained as well and most of the flowers were in drought mode or past their prime. the PIRTG was definitely the best bet - so it was swamped with tourists on Sunday, and only slightly less swamped on Monday. show up early or prepare to walk from the car.

other fun things we did in town included attending the tail end of the last day of the Oregon Brewers Festival at Waterfront Park. our favorite (out of the beers that remained) was “Lakefront White” by Lakefront Brewery of Milwaukee, WI.

i’ve posted my photos from the rose test garden up to Flickr:

mikeyboy.com’s portland international rose test garden photoset