57695 Van Dyke AvenueSo, even at work, I’ve become the guy who always has a place to eat no matter what town we’re in.
A co-worker and I traveled to the east side of the state on Saturday to Macomb County. Our day was broken up with about a three hour break in the middle of the afternoon. We could have just sat in the car watching Netflix on our phones but lunch sounded like a better idea. Co-worker looked at me and said, “You already have a place picked out, don’t you?”
The place I picked out was Brown Iron Brewhouse in Washington Township. The restaurant is a huge building on Van Dyke Avenue north of 26 Mile Road. The big brick building was built new about three years ago for the restaurant.
The parking lot was pretty full at 1:00 on a Saturday. There were signs pointing to public lots nearby but we got lucky and found what was likely the only open spot in the small parking.
The entrance is right next to the large beer garden on the parking lot side of the building. It was still a little too chilly to be outside, but this large, concrete patio is lighted by string lights at night and is full on sun during the day. There are several picnic tables with umbrellas and plenty of room for the cornhole games that were stacked up along the wall.
You have to go down a long hallway when entering the building to find the hostess station. You pass the small brewery area on your way in. Brown Iron brews some of it’s own beer but they have a huge beer list representing dozens of local and national craft breweries….don’t worry, I’ll get to that.
The host station is right at the edge of the large main dining room. It sort of sits between the bar and the dining space. A hostess grabbed a couple of menus and took us to a table right away. The parking lot looked packed but the dining room is rather large. There were a few open tables so we didn’t have to wait.
The tables in the dining room are all heavy solid wood. There are some picnic style tables as well some regular four tops. We were seated in a row of tables that shares a church pew as a bench on one side. I took that seat and let my co-worker have the actual chair. There are TV’s all over the place. Most of them were turned to soccer while others had some form of ESPN on.
The bar at Brown Iron Brewhouse has 65+ beers on tap. That area is separated from the main dining room by a wall. The taps are lined up the full length of the bar. Above them are TV’s that also go all the way across. The bar has been voted Great American Beer Bar in Michigan by CraftBeer.com for the last three years.
That tap list? It’s awesome. I couldn’t drink because we were at work and man was that disappointing. I have never seen Barrel Aged Ted Fiddy on a tap list anywhere and they had it. Normally, I would have tried all of the bars beers, but that one would have been….actually was, very difficult to pass up.
Brown Iron Brewhouse is known for their beer list, but they also have a pretty solid food menu too. The big ticket items is the BBQ. They smoke their own meats in house and have a number of combinations of brisket, pulled pork, chicken, and ribs.
I did the Texas Beef Brisket dinner.
The brisket only has a simple salt and pepper rub and it’s smoked with locally obtained apple wood. There was a lot more on the plate that I was expecting. The meat was fall apart tender and the salt and pepper seasoning really let the smoke shine through. There are some bottles of BBQ sauce on the table but this brisket didn’t need it.
Side number one I chose the seasoned fries. The thick cut fries are dusted in a seasoning salt that has a little kick of it’s own. I used a little bit of the spicy sauce to dip them in and gave it that much more of a kick. The fries were good but a little salty on their own. The brisket was salty the way I like it so salty fries could have been a bit of overkill were it not for the sauce to tone it down.
My second side choice was the Pretzel Mac & Cheese. The small bowl of cheese pasta noodles was the perfect size on this plate. The noodles were topped with crushed bits of pretzel and some Parmesan cheese that added just a little bit of crunch to the soft noodles.
The bill for my meal was just a hair over $20 with a Pepsi to drink.
Brown Iron Brewhouse is awesome. I really wish I could have had a couple of beers but based on food alone, this place is definitely a recommendation. I think I’ll keep my reputation as “the food guy” among my colleagues after this one.