1st City Brewery and Grill

This is a very nice place to visit if ever in, or going through, Bemidji - well worth the stop. Its located in its own little building kinda connected to the Union Station off the Paul Bunyan main street in town that goes along the lake. The outside is decievingly plain with some northwoods and country-home decor but once inside you'll become enthralled with its delicately classy feel and charm. Its divided up into a bar section to the right and a dining area, which in itself has three sections to the left. Simple but classy dark hardwood moldings and tables and the walls are a really nice dark mahogany velvet papering. One of the dining areas has one of the coolest hanging lamps I've ever seen. Its a simple but very big iron rod chandelier with about 10 or 12 round street lamp-like globes dimly setting the mood it the room. Very cool!
The bar area is small and quaint with about 16 stools around a retangular bar in the middle and over to the right a pool table sits where the rest of the seating is and there's 4 boothes and 4 tables, I took a seat at an empty booth facing a large screen TV, the only one in the room, so i could catch up on some football while enjoying my lunch.

The menu here is pretty big, some burger and sandwiches, lots of apps which range from $6 - $10. The dinner entree menu is a happening, steaks, chops, fish, pasta, pizza, chicken, and ribs which have a big range from $13 to $35. And for the light fare, soup and salad. I had a personnal pizza which was good and wrapped it up with a side of steak fries which were also good. I would think all the food here would be quite satisfactory and make any hungry person happy. Also offer a Sunday brunch which sounded promising but I already had my breakfast for the day.

Beer choices are a tad slim, they brew 5 feature beers year round and one seasonal. I tried a sample of them all and wound up getting a pint of their IPA and a seasonal porter spiced with ginger. Bottled offerings are the ordinary pickens covering the entire macro grades and some imports that start at Corona and end at Guinness with not much else inbetween. Of the brewed beers I had I'd say the are very average, nothing to exciting, carbonation seems to be flat on most, but some are tasty non the less and would probably make for some good drinkers. No real off flavors, just plain, simple and clean. But nothing top notch here.

My service was extremely friendly, they new right away that I was from out of town, yet never asked like how some places cram that sort of thing down your thoat. They always stopped by to check on how I was doing, asking if I liked the beer and food, but overall left me be, which was kinda nice as it was slow and I was able to relax without being pressured to leave or order more.

Overall this was a good experience and will stop by again when in the area again if time isn't an issue, as was the case for this visit.