It is not news that The Ginger Man has closed, during COVID (that is the blame, but it was coming before that). Though the building has now been completely torn down. A pretty good article on it, and goes into the real reason they had been failing...I agree that a combination of Braun Enterprises and their refusal to get anything that wasn't already in their "book" on tap hurt a lot. Then that really bad second location they opened on Gray for like six months basically ruined the brand, and they spent way to much money opening that. I don't know how a place that had successfully opened multiple locations in Austin and Dallas, just to name a few, bungled this so badly. https://www.chron.com/food/article/rice-demolishes-houston-ginger-man-19393308.php All that said, I will always love Gman, the first place I tried cask, which was Saint Arnold Elissa of course. We hosted our Beer Advocate tastings there every month, for like 8 years. Lots of memories there. Including reading some JP Donleavy at the bar I wonder where the signed copy of The Ginger Man ended up at?
It's a damn shame what happened to the Ginger Man. Both it and the Addison Flying Saucer biffed it around the same time and from a combination of the same reasons. I never experienced the original Ginger Man and only went to the Dallas one a few times but it did feel like something special. One thing I don't see mentioned is the initial move into high-priced areas (e.g. their Legacy West location in Plano) right around 2010, which certainly did not help. The one remaining location up here in Irving holds none of the charm and seemingly is propped up by being smack dab in the center of the Las Colinas hotel and entertainment district. The sale to a private real estate firm in retrospect made it obvious they weren't long for this world but the consumer shift away from huge tap list pubs I think is what ended up being the real decisive factor. You can see it in the two aforementioned places and even larger chains like BJ's starting to struggle a bit as a result.
I hadn't been to Gingerman in ages (2017ish)? Nonetheless, sad to see an institution disappear. What is this business about "The Book?" What a stupid concept. What criteria would get a beer added to "The Book?"
Quite sad. I never went to the original Houston G-Man, but the Dallas one: When I worked downtown in the late 90s and early 2000s, we hung out there near-weekly after work. It's also where our beer-advocate meetings took place in the mid 2000s. The uptown Dallas location got torn in 2021. I also went to the Austin one frequently when I was in town. I think they started expanding at exactly the wrong time, just before the pandemic. They opened several branches here in Dallas, over near White Rock Lake and over in Las Colinas in Irving, and then everything closed down for COVID.
Sad… I was regular there after moving back from college. Wednesday nights with Trish and Darin were a blast.
