So where were we? Right. Saturday morning, post-show hangover. I had made plans with my buddy Charles to do lunch at the Porter (www.theporterbeerbar.com), and my friend Nathan joined us.
I love the Porter. The beer selection is unparalleled, but what really elevates it for me is the food. Oh. My. God. The food! The core menu has some decent staples, sure, but I always go for the specials. They are always changing, and you can tell the chef really goes all out with them. I've had amazing vegetarian dishes there, and I usually avoid those like the plague. This particular morning, my hangover demanded a Berliner-weisse beer and a ginger ramen they had on special. That ramen? Oh my tits that ramen. It was everything I needed. Not much broth, and what was there was more reminiscent of a gingery, vinegared glaze that paired beautifully with the mushrooms and cucumber in it. The noodles were perfectly cooked, and the sour Berliner-weisse complimented everything while not making me want to kill myself. The guys had the 'hangover hash' special which apparently did the trick as well. I tried a bite of the grits, and man- it was as if Paula Deen had made them; crazy overwhelming butter flavor.
Afterwards, Charles and I headed to the Wrecking Bar Brewery (www.wreckingbarbrewpub.com) for a few beers before I would rejoin Nathan later for the Germany-Ghana game that was playing that day. We tasted around the Wrecking Bar's draft list, working our way through the majority of the beer selection between the two of us. My hangover long forgotten by now, I got a serious case of the munchies and ordered a couple small plates, the hot nuts and venison tartar. I gotta say, while the beers are top notch and excellent representations of their styles, the food left me underwhelmed. The nuts were too spicy for my tastes, and the tartar had an unpleasant puréed texture with an overbearing horseradish flavor.
Still, overall the experience was a blast, and I was bummed by the thought of leaving for a different venue for the game. As luck would have it though, I ran into another friend of mine who had just started working at the Wrecking Bar, Tim, and he revealed to me that they did have TVs for the game- in the actual brewery event space. So they wound up opening it up for Charles and I, and as Nathan rejoined us, more futbol aficionados filtered in to enjoy the game. I couldn't not snack during game time, so I decided to give the pretzel and cheese dip a try as well as the rabbit "wings". The rabbit? Delicious. I loved it, and will absolutely order it again. The pretzel was good, too- the cheese sauce, however, bugged me. The flavor was on point, but whoever prepped it didn't melt the cheese down properly and it gave the dip a grainy texture. Cheese, like any meltable material, has a specific melting point temperature. What a lot of people don't realize is that different cheeses have different melting points, and melting it down at a too- high temp too quickly can create greasy, oily, grainy goo. Not appetizing.
The game ended on a 2-2 tie for Germany and Ghana, and by now a thunderstorm that had snuck through Atlanta had ended. I was feeling fat, buzzed, and happy, and ready to chill. Nathan and I parted ways with Charles, and finished our evening... Reserved for the part 3. (This story was a lot longer than I originally thought...)
