Waltham Beer Works?

Thanks, Kraft. No shortage of moxie, I guess, but my Girl might have another name for it! Appreciate the comment.

 

Ok, I'll check it out. Thanks for checking in here on BA.

You realize you are setting a high bar & open for vast criticism? Boston (& suburbs) can be a smart, cynical market for food & drink. Restos coming in promising what you are doing are seemingly a dime a dozen, & mostly are frauds. Prove us wrong.

 

I am very excited for this place as a Waltham dirtbag who spends a lot on beer.

 

I look forward to rising to the challenge...

 

This is a quote from a "yelper" reviewing our restaurant in VT... (Which, alas, did NOT succeed due to a poor choice of locales on my part. We tried to do something special in an area that was not able to support it. But that was my fault. I feel like the space, locale, and plentiful audience at this new space will make for a winning combination. We shall see...)

"Where do I start? This restaurant is so much more than a comparison to other restaurants. I cannot compare it at all, for one really important reason. Their dishes are not just healthy, that can be said about so many different restaurants' attempts, their dishes are biased towards a diet that is balanced between grains, vegetables, meats and fats. I felt like I could eat there 4 days a week or more if I could eat out that often and I would not gain weight. I wouldn't lose it either, I would just have a perfect, tasty diet.

So many restaurants that want to be "healthy" have a bias, whether vegan or organic or they have some kind of philosophy that removes something from your diet that you love because they think it isn't good for you. The Phantom accentuates the underlying food by lightly adding those touches that many restaurants just slather on. They seem to embrace all foods.

Fantastic service, good prices, it is another wonderful destination in the Mad River Valley."

 

@phantomchef -- Looking forward to checking out your place when it opens. Sounds promising, and you already get several points just for not being a Beer Works. Welcome to the strip!

 

@phantomchef. Wishing you the best of luck on this venture. Putting yourself on the BA firing line takes a couple, so kudos for that. Hope it works out. Prosit!

 

I've actually had a shared plate experience since that post that was "tapas style" and I actually left decently full. I still spent a lot of money, but I could care less about spending money if I leave feeling satisfied (I don't need to leave stuffed).

Still not my preferred way to eat, but if there's a solid draft list there I'd probably check it out. Also, there's a middle ground between the pretentious rip-offs around Somerville/Cambridge and the upscale places that are actually worth it.

I discovered this in Portland, ME, arguably the hottest food spot in New England. I actually left each place stuffed (granted I had been eating a lot that entire weekend), and I didn't feel any of the portions were small. But still, the food was well done. Not cheap, but again, I'll shell out the cash if I feel it's worth it.

Basically, I hope you're more Portland than Cambridge. I appreciate the candor, and wish you the best of luck. The only thing stopping me from swinging by would be the fact that I'm never in Waltham. But if I am, this sounds like a potentially awesome place to visit.

All the best and cheers!

 

Sounds like a cool place and I'm already looking forward to checking it out. I will mention a pet peeve (not directed at you) about "shared plate" style restaurants though: places where the plates are not, in fact, particularly shareable.

I'll never understand places that give you 3 pieces of something (for a table of 2 or 4), or one difficult-to-slice up-something, or a small undifferentiated bowl of something, and think that counts as notably shareable. It's not exactly rocket science.

Anywho, best of luck!

 

YES! I hate this. It's so awkard to start cutting things in halves or thirds, or whatever other way you can think to equally an awkwardly split a small app designated as a "plate".

When I went to Street and Co. in Portland (granted this was just a plate meant to be split in two) it was a MASSIVE serving of Lobster Diavolo. We got two for the four of us, and my mom and brother ended up taking some home.

Then I go to Cambridge and I'm served 3 pieces of steak tartare for six people or 3 tiny pieces of rabbit legs. But then again, I'm a guy who just wants to sit down with his own fucking burger and fries or slice (or four) of Sicilian and a beer.

 

I think you'll find our "shareable plates" pretty... shareable. We do the cutting for you, so if there's a protein on the plate we will almost always serve it sliced so it's easy to dole around the table. The servings are not small, unless it's an inexpensive "embellishment" plate (like some marinated olives, for example) in which case they are cheap so you can get a couple of them if it's a table of 4 or more. We also have a burger and a couple sandwiches on the menu most times... so you COULD have an item all to yourself. The sandwiches we cut up into a few parts, the burger we supply a nice sharp knife, so you can cut in half or quarters with ease if you so desire. I'd suggest going to our website and click your way through to the "food" page... you'll see the kinds of things we're up to. Thanks for the feedback, and hopefully we'll see you as soon as we get this beast up and running. brewerstapandtable dot com

 

You better have some good-ass nachos.

 

Will your website reflect what is actually currently on tap? Nothing turns me off more than a beer bar that doesn't keep it's tap list updated and instead gives a sample of what could be available.

 

rather have that than some canned BS corporate response

 

not likely

 

We'll do our best, Dude... My gut tells me this stuff will all be moot once we open... I think folks are going to be pretty psyched to hang at our place whether we forget to update a few beers or not. 48 taps... all local... all as crafty as we can find. Changing a lot because we want the limited release and one-off stuff as much as the steady hits... yeah, almost guaranteed we'll likely space on the beer list updating every once in a while.

 

Amen, Brother... I fail miserably at wearing a corporate hat.

 

Doesn't matter there should be more places to worry about.

 

That's ok in my opinion, even something like once/week isn't bad. You only go through kegs so fast anyways. Moreover, a lot of people may be like me, and only venture out on weekends. So once/week is frequent enough for me.

How expensive is a set-up for a digital draft list? And can it be connected to a computer/iPad...etc. so that it can be updated live online?

I haven't seen this many places (in fact I can't even think of one in or around Boston), so I'm wondering how difficult this is to implement. That would be ideal for both the establishment and the customer. Easy to update, and frequent updates, the best of both worlds.

 

The only place I've ever seen this was at Whetstone station in Brattleboro** and it was indeed pretty cool. Certainly beats being told "we're out of that" for half the things on the tap list. Given how fast kegs can go and the competition for having draft lists that get people in the door I'm surprised more places don't do it.

I understand that to some extent you just want to get people to trust that you'll consistently have well curated taps and not sweat the specifics, but more information is still generally better than less.

**Boston folks should avoid looking at the prices because it will just make you sad.