Santander's post jogged my tastebuds, so I popped into the Hopleaf last night. Much to my delight, they're serving the Surly Coffee Bender again, which I promptly ordered to exclusion of anything else. Unfortunately, they still haven't gotten around to changing the menu yet per the season (looking forward to sampling my first scotch egg there), so I reverted back to my usual habit of ordering the brisket platter. The couple sitting next to me asked about my order and the bartender chimed in, saying that it was best ordered lean. I prefer a fattier cut and said as much, which led me to muse over not only how variable the dish can be, but how divergent our individual palates are as well. Well, the brisket was fine, not sublimely transcendent as I've experienced it in the past, but still amply delicious, and the little ramekin of my beloved Stilton mac 'n chee cheered my inner child, though it could have stood a few more minutes under the broiler.

I only mention these slight imperfections so as to underscore Santander's point regarding consistency -- they could definitely do with a culinary martinet a la Gordon Ramsay standing watch at the pass. For my part however, I will return for the Coffee Benders...with maybe an order of mac 'n chee followed by an apple fritter...soon...if not tonight.

Long ago d4v3 Wrote..

Actually, Heineken in bottles is supposed to be "skunky" tasting. That is by design. The green glass bottles promote the "skunky" flavor. It is only due to Anheuser Busch commercials, playing on the naivete of the US beer market, that the flavor is now considered undesirable

Can AB be right?


"This aroma and taste is due to the presence of the same mercaptans that are found in the scent glands of skunks. These compounds are formed when ultraviolet light cleaves an isohumulone molecule, and the resulting radical combines with a sulfur compound. "
( http://www.bjcp.org/study.php#trouble )

The Beer Judge Certification Program instructor who taught the related class I attended has a Phd. in Chemistry. He told us that what a skunk sprays is the same compond in a skunky beer on a molecular level. Each to their own, but I do not desire skunk gland compounds in my beer.

Miller Brewing chemically treats it's hops (a trade secret ) so their beers don't get skunky. It has been my experience that moderately (or higher) hopped beers (non-chemically treated) in brown bottles can also get skunky.

This is my first post here and I don't mean to ruffle any feathers. I've spent many hours reading the fine posts here and thank you all for your great contributions.

Ron

It's all context. I don't mind some peat or even manure in my wine or cigar, nor would I send back cheese because it smelled like an old pair of Vans. One of the best drinks I've had in a long while (the Hard Sell) tastes vaguely of litmus. Kudos to AB, Kraft et al for creating consistently flavorless foods.

HT70 wrote:My bad experience was limited to the surly middle aged female bartender. All the other bartenders seemed fine to me. Enjoy the great mussels and the great beer selection. Just avoid her like you would a bad rash and I think you'll be fine.

Interesting thread. Only reading through it because it got bumped, but man - i'd love to spend a night out with some LTH folks and see what they're like from the other side of the bar.

Before check please and the LTH love, I spent every Thursday night at the Hopleaf from about 7 until close because of that surly middle aged bartender. The first time i walked in there, i sat down, asked her for some direction (as i knew little about beer at the time, i was 20) and she couldn't have been better.

With decades of bar experience under her belt - she spent every thursday night with me and my brother basically teaching us everything that she knew about the beer she was selling us, sharing funny bar stories from the years and she even let us close the place and walk her out on a few nights.

You know what I learned? If you walk into that place with a teency bit of class, an open attitude, some manors and the ability to restrain yourself from leaning over the bar, snapping or waving a $20 around the bar to get a tenders attention, you'll probably be treated right.

And after working in the bar industry since I was 13 years old, I can tell you that most LTHers would be appalled at how most customers act on the other side of the bar.

Not sayin, but just sayin - out of all the Thursdays that i spent at the Hopleaf, if anyone got treated with attitude they typically deserved it. Paying customers or not, everyone should learn to treat servers with respect.

A broader discussion of Hopleaf can be found at the end of this link:

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6978&hilit=Hopleaf

Count me as a fan of the place.

Djenks,,

I think I understand that your statement is reaching broader than just my experience, but I feel compelled to reply as it’s somewhat insinuated that we brought this behavior upon ourselves. I’ve actually spent a decent amount of time bartending/serving too. I’m also a southern boy who was taught southern manners in a pretty strict fashion. Most of friends here think I’m too nice when dealing with servers. I’m always the one that says to not complain because I don’t want to cause a scene or feel as though the server may just be having a bad day. Anyway, though that incident was a few years ago, I remember it pretty vividly. We’re all adults who eat out often. We weren’t drunk. We weren’t causing a scene or monopolizing her time by not knowing our orders. We weren’t inundating with dumb questions. She was simply nasty to us for an entire evening for no apparent cause. I have never had a straightforward malicious bartender like that in the thousands of times I’ve been at a bar or restaurant. It seems like others have had the same experience.

Yes they have.

When an establishment feels they are "cooler" than most of their patrons, service takes a dive. I thought Hop Leaf in the beginning was excellent, my last visit with five people not fitting their succesful image was "servers gone bad" from the beer recommended by the bartender to meal that was not pleasant. were told that in many not subtle ways that we were out of place by our server, the bus boy and the manager who responded by saying "yeah right" when I thanked him for bringing something they forgot.
Strangely eneough I felt hurt that a place I highly recommended so often, now was a complete stranger.

I've pretty much stopped going to Hop Leaf for a few reasons: mainly it is because the food doesn't impress me that much anymore. It would be fine if I could get a table in a reasonable amount of time, but it is surely not good enough, IMO, to wait an hour for. The beer selection is great, but it isn't as difficult as it once was to find a lot of these beers.

On top of this, the staff never seems very friendly. Last time I wanted to go, I called ahead to see how long the wait was. I was told that they do not give wait times over the phone. In fact, the person wouldn't even say if there was a wait at all. Standard practice, I guess, but I am smart enough to know that the current wait time may not be a good indication of what the wait will be 20 minutes later when I arrive. Yet, knowing whether the current wait is 5 minutes or two hours is still useful information. (On Saturday, I called Hot Chocolate and was given the current wait for both bar and table seating!)

It was a snap to get a table at 7 PM last night (and also to park, $2 donation to LAZ and then home free), but food was weak, glasses weren't sparkling clean, and service as mentioned was downright unfriendly, harried and petulant while they weren't even particularly busy. Lava cake didn't melt, apple fritters and frites were cool by the time they made it to the table, a friend's steak was gristly (if at least correctly medium-rare). The pork chop special did look and taste great. This was a place where the servers used to come sit at the tables with guests and talk beer and neighborhood gossip in down moments. I've been losing affection for the dining room for some time - the front room by the bar is where the spirit seems to live currently. Beer selection great as always (rotating drafts especially), though we're looking at a bottle menu from August 14, and I have a sheaf of menus from 2005-2007 where they were updating them monthly, with many more seasonals.

djenks wrote:

HT70 wrote:My bad experience was limited to the surly middle aged female bartender. All the other bartenders seemed fine to me. Enjoy the great mussels and the great beer selection. Just avoid her like you would a bad rash and I think you'll be fine.

Interesting thread. Only reading through it because it got bumped, but man - i'd love to spend a night out with some LTH folks and see what they're like from the other side of the bar.

Before check please and the LTH love, I spent every Thursday night at the Hopleaf from about 7 until close because of that surly middle aged bartender. The first time i walked in there, i sat down, asked her for some direction (as i knew little about beer at the time, i was 20) and she couldn't have been better.

With decades of bar experience under her belt - she spent every thursday night with me and my brother basically teaching us everything that she knew about the beer she was selling us, sharing funny bar stories from the years and she even let us close the place and walk her out on a few nights.

You know what I learned? If you walk into that place with a teency bit of class, an open attitude, some manors and the ability to restrain yourself from leaning over the bar, snapping or waving a $20 around the bar to get a tenders attention, you'll probably be treated right.

And after working in the bar industry since I was 13 years old, I can tell you that most LTHers would be appalled at how most customers act on the other side of the bar.

Not sayin, but just sayin - out of all the Thursdays that i spent at the Hopleaf, if anyone got treated with attitude they typically deserved it. Paying customers or not, everyone should learn to treat servers with respect.

They didn't card a 20-year-old?

PortPkPaul wrote:They didn't card a 20-year-old?

They did. I took a tip from the generation before me and got one of those fake ID things. Long in the past.

Two of us had dinner at the hopleaf on saturday, and I have to say that I didn't see any evidence of any of the complaints people have been mentioning. We arrived about 4:50 and loitered until they opened the dining room at 5. by 5:10, there were only 3 or 4 tables seated. the place was only actually full including the balcony by about 5:40 or so.

we were hoping to eat quickly so we could head off to early doors at TVH, and food came out promptly and it was delicious. when we visited in May, there was some sort of kitchen meltdown, and it took more than an hour for food to come out, but this time we were eating before 5:30. CB&J was great, as were the frites and mac and cheese. My husband had the sprouts with bacon and enjoyed them very much.

Service was friendly and quick-- not amazing, but certainly not surly and about what I'd expect from somewhere like this.

Darren72 wrote:I've pretty much stopped going to Hop Leaf for a few reasons: mainly it is because the food doesn't impress me that much anymore. It would be fine if I could get a table in a reasonable amount of time, but it is surely not good enough, IMO, to wait an hour for. The beer selection is great, but it isn't as difficult as it once was to find a lot of these beers.

On top of this, the staff never seems very friendly. Last time I wanted to go, I called ahead to see how long the wait was. I was told that they do not give wait times over the phone. In fact, the person wouldn't even say if there was a wait at all. Standard practice, I guess, but I am smart enough to know that the current wait time may not be a good indication of what the wait will be 20 minutes later when I arrive. Yet, knowing whether the current wait is 5 minutes or two hours is still useful information. (On Saturday, I called Hot Chocolate and was given the current wait for both bar and table seating!)

Their kitchen cannot handle the number of people on Friday and Saturday nights. Seems that people who go on weeknights or as soon as it opens on a Saturday still get decent food more often than not. If you go during normal Friday and Saturday dining hours though, you are really playing Food Roulette -- could be good, could be marginal, could be terrible, and you have no way of knowing until you take a bite. Two straight bad experiences for us, including quite honestly the worst food I have eaten in my life (and insult to injury, we got sick the next morning), put one of our previously favorite places into the permabanned category.

I debated about which Hopleaf thread to post in and decided this one was most appropriate. Mr. X and I went to Hopleaf last night, along with nr706, to try to Allagash Coolship Red, a spontaneously fermented lambic on draft in Chicago for the first time. They were also doing glass pours of various vintage bottles of barrel-aged ales. We got our beers and found them all quite nice. I went back up to the bar to get water and asked about a beer that was just poured as it was a lovely color. Turns out it was the Coolship Red. Due to miscommunication on our part and misunderstanding on the bartender's part, our first beer was not the Coolship Red. (let's ignore the fact that the three of us didn't pay attention to the color...) The bartender apologized profusely and wanted to do something to make it right. I appreciated that and told him to do whatever he needed. I ordered a glass of the Coolship Red for us to try. (It was delicious!) The bartender then came over and gave nr706 his money back for the first wrong beer. When I paid our tab, we had not been charged for our first beer nor the Coolship Red. With all the negative comments about the service, I thought he went out of his way to make this right.

To borrow G Wiv's phrase, Hopleaf, count me a fan!

Didn't read through the whole thread, but noticed that the last post before the one above was from 2009. I'll concur with that one and say that in the last several years I've had only positive experiences at Hopleaf, including one incident about a year ago where I left a pair of sunglasses there and returned a few days later to find them waiting for me behind the bar. I've only been in the afternoon, but never had to wait.

I was expecting the place to be packed last night, for the pouring of the extremely rare Allagash Coolship Red on tap (may be sold out by now). It wasn't cheap — $13 a glass (maybe 10 oz.) — but cheaper than the only other way to sample it, which would require a plane ticket to Portland, ME.

It wasn't packed. It was reasonably full for a Wednesday night, but I would have thought the rare beer would have attracted more folks. (I guess there aren't as many out there that are as beer-geeky as I am.) I've read interviews with Michael Roper, Hopleaf's owner, that his business has been affected by the proliferation of local craft breweries and their tap rooms, and even moreso with the recent loosening of laws regarding tap rooms, allowing them to serve guest beers and ciders.

So I'll encourage all LTHers to keep supporting GNR Hopleaf. The food is great — they're known for mussels, but so much else from the kitchen is worthwhile. And where else could we have done a vertical tasting of Allagash Curieux, 2013, 2015, and 2017?

In keeping with the Belgian theme, and inspired by a chat I had earlier in the day with Ronnie Suburban re: sour beers, we finished off with a bottle of Rodenbach Grand Cru, which was reasonably priced, and compared well with the Allagash sours.

A great night thanks to The GP and Mr. X. Hopleaf isn't the newest, shiniest new toy in the beer world, but to call it solid and reliable would massively understate the beer experience you can have there.

The expansion has certainly made it easier to get a table. The food and service haven't missed a beat. Such a fantastic place.

“I've read interviews with Michael Roper, Hopleaf's owner, that his business has been affected by the proliferation of local craft breweries and their tap rooms, and even moreso with the recent loosening of laws regarding tap rooms, allowing them to serve guest beers....”

Here’s a blog post on that very subject by a Denver craft beer bar owner
(who mentions Hopleaf)

http://fallingrocktaphouse.com/death-of-the-cool/

The draft Coolship was gone by the time I got there on Saturday afternoon. However I did manage to get the last bottle they had in stock and I was extremely pleased with it.
Citrus and funk doesn’t sound like a winning combo but it worked.
Is there really no way to get the bottles locally?