The Alameda Brewhouse Sucks

While I could be writing about things that would compel me to think or be a better human being--like why I haven't talked to my sister since July, or the ubiquitousness of gadgets that keep us all from living in the present moment--I think I'll just bitch about the Alameda Brewhouse instead. This can be my little way of extracting a tiny bit of pleasure from the waste of good real estate they occupy in my neighborhood. I don't care how good their beer is. It is good. But everything else about the Alameda Brewhouse is terrible.

First I'd like to begin by reminiscing about how good they were when they first opened several years ago. The service was friendly and most of them appeared to be living beings. Today they are the undead. They are zombies dug up from the cemetery located just adjacent to the sucky old Alameda Brewhouse. You can see it in their beady little eyes, which are vacant as the tombs from which they have been exhumed. Okay, some of them are not undead. Those ones are stoned. Undead, stoned, what's the diff? I realize I am no longer reminiscing. I do not care. If you were to go to the Alameda Brewhouse right now, I can guarantee that it will take the undead/stoned server twenty minutes to greet you at your table. After that she/he/it will fail to bring you the water you begged for, and you will die of dehydration. While your cells are lysing, you will witness your server staring off into space near the bar, or drawing pentagrams in the dust near the water station.

The food. Oh. My. God. In years past, the Alameda Brewhouse had a few things going for it in the food department. They had a list of specials that changed often. They had a quasi-imaginative menu, especially when compared with other local brewpubs I can't wait to rip on. Like a rock shrimp quesadilla that tasted good, and pub fare that was done well and with care. A twist of lemon here, a scratch bisque there--all in all an excellent place to hunker down and enjoy a fine cream stout and some hot soup on a cold rainy day. Anymore that list of specials, which is a simple black and white copy, is the same one they had six months ago, as evidenced by the food stains all over it. The last time I was there (I am stupid and hopeful and occasionally return thinking that by some miracle things have changed) I ordered a caesar salad, which one would think is Hard to Fuck Up.** This caesar salad was comprised of brown, wilted lettuce and drenched in sub par but not surprisingly crappy dressing, croutons made of old concrete, and dry shredded parm from the oldest wheel of dryness ever to be wheeled. I was most upset about the lettuce, which should not have passed muster with the prep cook, the cook, or the undead waitress, who still hadn't brought me any water. She had, to her credit, brought my partner, Very Bad Man, his water. I tried to flag her down with my arms, and later, flares. She came back a long time later and I showed her the brown wilty lettuce and she appeared to not know what to do. After a lengthy silence, she asked if I might rather have a spinach salad instead. I agreed. The spinach salad caesar replacement was this: dry leaves of bagged spinach, damp and smelly sliced brown mushrooms, and cherry tomatoes which rolled around like marbles. WTF???!!! And I never did get my water. My tasty golden ale was a wasted experience. On other occasions, Very Bad Man and myself have ordered chicken wings there, and those have been little gristly over-fried things that look like the cocoons that the gremlins come out of in the 80's hit movie Gremlins.

Other food nightmares at the Alameda Brewhouse, which sucks: salads left under the heat lamp in the window while the undead servers scratch their heads trying to remember where the water is. Soup served luke. As in warm. Calamari cooked to the consistency of shredded tires. Club sandwiches (another item that usually belongs in the Hard to Fuck Up category) so huge and dry you could start building a retaining wall with them. Lastly? Brown. Avacado.

**Not easy to find a good caesar anywhere for some reason.
The Alameda Brewhouse
4765 N.E. Fremont, Portland, Oregon
Tel: (503) 460-9025