click to enlarge
-
Peter Lawrence Kane
-
Rye Way or the Highway
Bringing the no-tipping trend out of the restaurant universe and into a brewpub,
Old Bus Tavern has opened to some fanfare on Mission Street in Bernal Heights, as the principals are homebrew aficionados.
Unrelated to the Bus Stop Bar on Union and Laguna, it’s notable for the tapestries on the wall, the fermentation tanks sitting in the back, and for a chalkboard image of a microbus driving down Bernal Hill as a prop plane overhead trails a banner that reads “Drink Up!” The taps are a good cross-section of what’s doing in Bay Area microbreweries, from Fieldwork’s Tundra Triple IPA to Almanac’s Meyer Lemon Gose to Fort Point’s Westfalia Vienna Lager.
click to enlarge
click to enlarge
“Westfalia” comes up again, as one of the co-founders restored a 1978 VW and drove cross-country for a summer, which was the impetus for an Indiegogo campaign to buy and restore another VW bus for the business itself. With beer taps, a cooking station, speakers, party lighting, it’s going to cruise around town getting people drunk on a 1600cc engine. Hence, the Old Bus.
I walked in Friday evening just as the setting sun was flooding the place, like the Map Room scene in
Raiders of the Lost Ark, before disappearing in an instant and revealing a packed house. The kitchen puts out some impressive stuff, from a cumin semifreddo with charred orange to pickled quail eggs to onion spaetzle with maitake, mustard seed, and kohlrabi. There’s a pared-down menu for late night bites, in case you’ve just got to have some steak fries for Fourth Meal.
But of course, Old Bus is a bar first and foremost, and beyond the beers, there are some fun categories, including half a dozen boilermakers named for classic country songs (among them a pairing of Irish whiskey with chili porter called a Coal Miner’s Daughter), and two shandys. If it’s a cocktail you want, you could lean towards Sierra Blanca (Sotol Siempre, green Chartreuse, lime, prickly pear, and pistachio tincture) or do as I did and sip a Rye Way or the Highway (rye, NOLA coffee liqueur, orgeat syrup), the sweetness of which reminded me of Ice Cream Bar’s incredible New Orleans Hangover.
All in all, Old Bus Tavern seems well-executed from top to bottom. If nothing else, the last time I spent any significant duration in a VW bus was with some stoners who would not shut up about the aliens who taught the Mayans how to make an accurate calendar. This spot is way better.
Old Bus Tavern,
3193 Mission, 415-843-1938.
