Free Beer!

Finding a restaurant that serves a great hamburger shouldn’t be difficult. After ordering the burger at Hoppy Brewing Company, only one thing can be said: the search goes on.

Hoppy Brewing Company is a happy little brewpub located on Folsom Blvd. in Sacramento. The place is what it appears to be from the outside, a drinking establishment that happens to serve food.

Inside the brewpub is a long bar with a full array of liquor and plenty of taps for dispensing a variety of pilsners, including several that are brewed on the premises. The dining room itself is not particularly large, but it isn’t intimate. Tables are easily arranged to accommodate groups of different sizes. There is limited outdoor seating, but those tables only seat two.

Seating a party of seven wasn’t really a problem; the wait for a table was reasonable for any restaurant during peak dining hours. However, there wasn’t much room for waiting. Standing around the hostess’ podium as other diners and the staff navigated through was a bit uncomfortable.

The restaurant was particularly noisy and it was difficult to carry on conversations. Above the chatter was a sound system that played music. While the chatter is something to be expected and overlooked, the music was unnecessary.

Once seated with menus, the waiter promptly took drink orders. A free pint of beer was offered to those who had voted in that day’s presidential election. In addition to the varieties of light and dark beer, the menu features a decent selection of wines and spirits. For those with limited wine knowledge, the menu lists the location of the vineyards to aid in selection.

Without a free pint of beer (not for lack of voting), the soft drinks were of the Pepsi variety. Ordering a Coke and receiving the “Is Pepsi okay?” comeback, root beer was my drink of the night. A bit overpriced at $2.50, I was expecting a refill before the end of dinner but was offered none.

The menu is complete enough to cater to the desires of most diners. The appetizers are typical for a brewpub: potato skins, hot wings, calamari and cheese sticks. Much of the entrée menu seems a bit ambitious for this type of dining establishment. Pizza, mahi mahi, ribs, steaks and pastas are difficult foods to prepare well. Many restaurants that specialize in those kinds of foods don’t always succeed in quality.

The entrées that made more sense for a brewpub to serve are burgers and sandwiches. The hamburger was the most appealing, reasonably priced entrée for me. Rather than having half a dozen different hamburgers on the menu, burgers are available with an interesting variety of fixings.

Included on the burger are lettuce and tomato. For forty cents each, different seasonings, cheeses, sauces and toppings like mushrooms, pineapple and jalapeño peppers can be added. Unfortunately, adding onion to the hamburger was a forty-cent addition as well. Charging extra for onions on a hamburger borders on the unthinkable.

Hoppy’s was hopping but all of the food came quickly, in about 15 minutes. The burger was prepared medium rare with lettuce, tomato and onion, exactly the way it was ordered. The shape of the burger was perfectly round and flat, a telltale sign that what I was about to eat was recently a frozen 1/3 pound industrial patty. One bite of the burger confirmed that suspicion.

There was nothing terrible about the hamburger; it just wasn’t anything great. For the $8.25 plus the forty cents for the onion, I expected something more than a factory burger. It was better than a Jumbo Jack from Jack-In-The-Box, but those are less than two bucks and they come with onions.

The service was completely professional and efficient. Plates were promptly cleared and individual checks were issued without having to ask who ordered what. The entire experience was pleasant and enjoyable. I would dine at the Hoppy Brewing Company again, but I would order something other than the hamburger.


On the Net
http://www.hoppy.com/