24 S. Whittaker StreetIt finally hit the point of the summer that we get to go on vacation as a family . The kids had been at my parents for six days already. J and I had to work until Wednesday and as soon as I got off work Wednesday evening, we loaded up the car for an extended weekend and headed to Iroquois County, IL to pick up the kids.
We were anxious to see the kids but first, we wanted to get dinner. Dinners with nobody whining or fighting are rare so we wanted to take advantage of it just being J and I one more time.
We got on the road and started heading west on I-94. There are two breweries in New Buffalo now and we were determined to eat at one of them on this drive.
I let J pick since I picked Paw Paw Brewing the night before. She just wanted to sit on a patio with a big drink and she wasn’t able to do either at Paw Paw. The patio was being used for a private event and they didn’t have any ciders or sweeter drinks on draft.
I thought the drink menu looked better for her at Ghost Isle but the only thing on the menu she was really interested in was the pulled pork…the same meal she had the night before.
She ended up picking the one I was really hoping she would pick. Beer Church Brewing Company.
Beer Church Brewing Company likes to point out they were New Buffalo’s first brewery. They’re located on Whittaker Street near downtown. If you come in to New Buffalo from Exit 1 on I-94, you can’t miss the old Water’s Edge United Methodist church just to the south of Buffalo Street.
Everything in the 156 year old former church was deconsecrated when Water’s Edge moved out in 2014, but there’s no denying you’re walking in to a former church as you open the big red double doors. Sure, the floors have been redone with laminate and the walls painted bright with murals but the vaulted ceiling of the steeple and the former alter where the Italian brick oven now stands are dead giveaways.
We found a hostess right inside the door and she asked if we wanted to sit inside or outside. We said outside so she pointed us down a flight of stairs to another hostess. The thing about the patio, it’s 21+…so really good thing we didn’t have the kids on this trip. The patio is what ultimately made the decision for us to stop at Beer Church.
This outdoor space is pretty amazing. Patio furniture fills in empty spaces on the perfectly manicured lawn. There’s a sitting area with an outdoor fire place and even a bar so you don’t necessarily have to go inside to get beer.
We were taken to one of the tables with an umbrella along the outer edge of the patio on the Whittaker Street side. The hostess sat down food menus and a drink menu for us to share. The tables here are on concrete walkways and the furniture is a little more high end outdoor furniture.
There isn’t a huge beer menu and being a Wednesday evening, they hadn’t started reloading for the weekend. There were a few beers crossed off the list which is too bad since they were the ones I wanted but I stuck to one of Beer Church’s original beers, the Pontius Pilate IPA. This offering is a smooth drinking IPA a citrus finish. Very refreshing and very easy to drink with dinner.
J had seen a cider on their website that she was looking forward to, but as we came to learn, the website really isn’t updated very often. She has been turned on to sour’s though. I don’t really like sour’s but she likes the sweetness and the fruitiness of most sours. She was able to pick James and the Giant Preach and really liked it. It worked out not having a cider on the menu again. They do have a pretty large wine list though so she could have at least went that route but she’d rather drink a cider or some other kind of sweet offering.
The food menu is really, really hard to find on their website and even harder on mobile. It’s there but you have to zoom in…oh..and it’s also an old menu. It’s pretty much the same but there are a few new things and, again, the thing J wanted was no longer available.
I was pleasantly surprised to see a pastrami sandwich on the menu. It’s not on the online menu so I wasn’t expecting it but my heart skipped a beat when I saw it on the menu in front of me. The bread is actually baked to order in their Vesuvio Oven that was flown in from Italy. The fresh, warm, doughy bread filled with pastrami, Provolone cheese, house made pickles, pickled red onions, and stone ground mustard and it is amazing. The bread is so good you could eat with nothing stuffed inside and it would still be amazing. The peppery, salty pastrami and thinly sliced pickles make up most of the flavor (honestly I took the pickled red onions off…they didn’t work on this sandwich for me). There really isn’t a side served with the sandwich…there’s a small salad of arugula, tomatoes, and Parmesan cheese…but you really don’t need one. The sandwich is very hearty and very filling on it’s own.
J went the pizza route. She was looking forward to a pizza on their website menu called Roberto The Magnificent but that’s no longer on the menu. Instead, she went the Margherita route. This delicious pizza is baked fresh in the Vesuvio oven and topped with a San Marzano tomato base, mozzarella, basil, grana, and extra virgin olive oil. The olive oil and the oil from the tomatoes kind of pooled in the middle of the pizza and kinda stopped it from firming up but that didn’t matter. J used a fork for the first couple of bites and couldn’t believe just how bright and fresh the sauce tasted. The crust is, again, the type of doughy bread that you could just eat and eat and eat all on it’s own. The 9″ people doesn’t look to be enough for one person but they say it feeds two. Like the sandwich, this bread really fills you up fast so yeah, one pizza could easily feed a lot of couples.
The table next to us finished off their meal with some gelato…so we did too. The only flavor they had that I really like is the Tahitian Vanilla. They brought out a small bowl and rich, creamy, silky gelato that J and made short work of.
Our bill for dinner was was just under $50 for the two of us so it can be a little expensive but you really are paying for high quality food. It’s hard to get too worked up about the price because what they’re putting on your plate is worth every penny….but I’m really glad we didn’t have the kids with us.
Beer Church Brewing Company is a must for anyone traveling I-94 or vacationing in the area. The renovated church and beer garden are both amazing spaces and the food is next level. As J said, “My kind of church.”