#proper pint

[pnwnicecouple]

In honor of St Patrick’s day, it feels appropriate to repost this from a few years ago!

[nice-bright-colors]

Sadly, the foam doesn’t count for splitting G’s. Maybe next time.

[acommonloon]

A tumblr friend jogged my memory yesterday with a post that reminded me of an English pub...my favorite place in the world...an English pub! it is.

"Blimey!" as my Welsh friend Marguerite would say. It made my day.

In late November of 1989, just after the Thanksgiving holiday, a dream came true. I went to live in England. We went to live in England I should say. My wife and I would reside at 155 High St, Henlow, Bedfordshire for nearly three years.

Oh well, I could regale (bore you to death) for hours with stories of our adventures there but I'm not that cruel. Suffice it to say, we lived a dreamy lifetime in those short years and I remember it well. Also, I've got video and pics so...

Anyway, driving downtown last evening I asked D if she got any association when I said, "Lamb's Conduit Street." She did not. Not surprising really. She's spent the last 40 years humoring me when I wanted to visit pubs, breweries, and such all over the world. When I told her what it was she said she mostly just remembered The Five Bells, our local, and a place she recalled us visiting once that was in the cellar of an old house. Yesss, that's where I first had piccalilly I exclaimed.

Yeah, whatever, she replied, I just remember the tables and chairs being so old and the ceiling so low.

Right? Great times!

We've nothing like that here but a man called Joe Phillips opened his version of an English pub in nearby New Albany about five years ago. He keeps Fullers ESB or London Pride on tap and though the news of that mainstay English brewery being bought by the Japanese hit us while we were in London a few years ago, it's as close as I get to a proper pint or a curry around here.

I'll take it. Cheers!

[nice-bright-colors]

Some days it’s just so hard to decide...that is decide which one to have first.

[nice-bright-colors]

I needed some liquid courage before I call The Pops. Fresh Squeezed IPA. Squeeze me.

[acommonloon]

Agony and ecstasy warred in my mind sitting at the bar in this masterpiece of a pub.  The ecstasy was a pub as perfect as I could imagine or had ever experienced outside of England, while the agony was so many years wasted, it was opened in 1990 by an Englishman and this was my first visit.  I could have been coming here for decades.  Damnit! 

D surprised me on Friday by saying she wanted to go to Indianapolis.  There was something at Ikea she wanted and...”they don’t ship?” I asked.  But I readily agreed.

I love Indy, it’s chock full of unique bars, restaurants, and breweries that make up most of my middle-age adventuring but, at two hours distant, I’ve had to settle for experiencing them only a few at a time.  At most, I visit twice a year and at that rate, I can’t even keep up with new places always opening and I’ve a list of well-known Indy establishments, favorites I’m drawn to return to like Black Acre and Chatham Tap and too many I’ve still never visited such as 20 Tap, Metro Diner, and Chatterbox.

Broad Ripple Brew Pub (BRBP) had been on my radar for years but somehow I’d never focused on it.  I’d come close, one of the first places I’d visited after moving back to Indiana, was Brugge Brasserie in Broad Ripple.  I remember walking along the street from several blocks away and passing so many interesting places calling me in, if there were only time.  BRBP was only a five minute walk from there and though I knew it, I never knew what I was missing.

Now finally I know.  

[acommonloon]

Fish n chips at the Rover.

[all-binge--no-purge]

FYI ...