Beer for foodies
Craft-brewing icon Dean Biersch to open Sebastopol Gastropub
Gordon Biersch co-founder Dean Biersch, a long-time resident of Sonoma, found a location for his new venture, Hopmonk Tavern, in Sebastopol at the old Sebastopol Brewing Company building. The tavern will be a gastropub -- a sophisticated beer haven that appeals to foodies as well.
CHARLIE GESELL / The Press DemocratPublished: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 3:26 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 3:26 a.m.
In Europe, beer and wine have co-existed peacefully for centuries. The more, the merrier.
Restaurateur and craft brewing icon Dean Biersch is of the same mindset, particularly as it applies to the hallowed grounds of Northern California Wine Country.
Biersch, co-founder with brewmaster Dan Gordon of Gordon Biersch Brewing Co., is primed to open Hopmonk Tavern, a sophisticated beer and food haven in Sebastopol. Complete with Euro-inspired beer garden, it's just a stone's throw from some of the best pinot noir and chardonnay vineyards known to the New World.
"People come up here to have experiences," Biersch said, "and while all these (wine) tasting rooms are awesome, this kind of tasting room makes sense to me, too."
A longtime resident of Sonoma, Biersch has been noodling on the concept of creating a gourmet place for beer and food around here for years. San Francisco and its throngs of foodies first came to mind, but the city proved fraught with obstacles. So did Sonoma.
Biersch eventually stumbled on the former site of Powerhouse Brewing and Sebastopol Brewing companies, a 105-year-old historic landmark he sensed to be just right.
That still meant tinkering with the layout and vibe of the space, which now includes a 2,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art live music venue.
"The thing I loved about getting into the brewpub business is that I sensed right away it has every bit the level of sophistication of these pinots being produced here," he said. "But there's something about beer that makes it more acceptable, maybe easier to understand, easier to comprehend. It's a friends pushing tables together, sharing thing."
In thinking about the tavern's look and feel but especially about the food he would serve, Biersch also insisted Hopmonk be representative of its locale.
"This is Sebastopol, it's Northern California," he said. "If we don't represent vegetarian food in a thoughtful way, if we don't have healthy food for kids here, we're not going to be relevant."
Biersch is no stranger to shepherding big ideas from initial concept to reality.
After building 12 Gordon Biersch brewpubs across five Western states, most notably in Palo Alto (the first, which opened in 1988) and San Francisco, the partners sold the restaurants to Big River Brewing in 1999.
Biersch stayed on as a consultant, opening five more Gordon Biersch brewpubs; he still is part owner of the Gordon Biersch brewery, a production facility, in San Jose.
For Hopmonk, Biersch will choose the beers himself, enlisting the aid of beer sommelier "Hopmonk" Anastas, as well as brewing small batches of his own ales on site and an unfiltered pilsner from the larger GB brewery, paying close attention to each beer's seasonality and pairing possibilities.
To that end, he's brought on chef Lynn McCarthy, whose mission it has been to create menus of healthy, delicious items to complement a wide swath of beers.
"One of the goals was to make something that was comfortable but modern, a new take on the classic European way of enjoying beer and food," she said. "As the temperature and our tastes change, the food and beer will change with it."
McCarthy has crafted lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch menus as well as a late-night menu, all of which include a selection of small plates, salads, sandwiches, sides and "sweet endings." Bigger entrees (steak, roast chicken, lamb chops) can be ordered for lunch and dinner.
McCarthy's signature items include a beer braised sausage plate, Hopmonk Reuben, roasted duck and baby spinach salad, mussels and Tavern fries, slow roasted pulled pork sandwich and roasted pork adobo on corn cakes.
An elongated bar will dispense an evolving selection of 16 draft beers from around the world as well as regional producers; more will be in bottle. A full bar will figure most prominently at brunch making mimosas and Bloody Mary's.
It's Biersch's sense of restraint that is remarkable, though. In the very design of Hopmonk, he has been intent from the get-go on this notion of selection, of being able to provide in-depth information about the beers he's chosen.
"You can go to a whole bunch of other places and get 100 beers on draft," he said. "For me what's cool about where we are with small breweries is there's so much information that people may not even know how to ask for yet. It's going to be an opportunity to turn people on."
A lot of people are already turned on to the finely honed beers made by local brewer Brian Hunt of Moonlight Brewing, who'll provide his Twist of Fate Bitter Ale to Hopmonk, among others.
"He's brilliant to choose Wine Country," Hunt said of Biersch. "We understand flavors, we understand fresh, we are in tune with our palates."
Hunt likes the fact that beer can be appreciated for its lack of pretension but agrees with Biersch that there may be some catching up to do when it comes to understanding how different beers are made, though he hopes it never gets to the level we've sometimes allowed with wine. With beer, he hopes, you can have drinkability, desirability and complexity while still maintaining its essential spirit of conviviality.
"A lot of wine drinkers who may be approaching burnout will be enthralled to discover a whole other world," Hunt said. "Everyone that's pooh-pooh'd beer is going to realize there's more than just Bud Light, there are some amazing beers out there."
You can reach Staff Writer Virginie Boone at 521-5440 or virginie.boone@
pressdemocrat.com.
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