Republic

beer flight & sausage with 3 precious dollops of mustard

I will admit now that trekking to the heart of Uptown is not my favorite thing to do on a weekend evening. The area seems a bit overrun by 21 year-olds (now I sound elderly), parking is ridiculous, and the food is always going to be pricey. If I saunter that direction, it's usually during the week or on a weekend at, say, 10 a.m., when the bulk of the young-uns are still nursing their hangovers and I can order a meal or poke around a store in peace. 

But sometimes making an exception proves worthwhile and that was certainly the case with Republic. I sat at a high top around 8 p.m. on Saturday and didn't have trouble getting a seat (as long as we're not talking about the "trouble" a 5'1 woman has in scaling a high top chair, I realize this is a problem for which I am in the minority). The beer list is great, peppered with some up-and-coming local breweries like Lift Bridge, Indeed, and Harriet.  The $10 flight was an excellent option for someone like me who is routinely conflicted by the desire to stick to a well-loved brew (Indeed's Stir Crazy Winter Ale) versus trying something new. I enjoyed my Stir Crazy plus Arrogant Bastard Ale plus, the piece de resistance, the Odell's Chocolate Stout. My meal was filling so I doubt I would have wanted dessert anyway, but that chocolate stout was a thick, beautiful, sweet-but-not-overly-so cap to my evening.  A generous portion of each meant $10 saw me happy for the meal, vs. buying two $8ish beers, so I definitely appreciate the flight option. 

The food menu was impressive, too, and on my next trip I'd like to stick to sharing a couple small plates.  My local sausages and potatoes was HUGE and could have easily and happily been shared. That being said, I did eat all of the sausages, so I suppose I'm mainly looking for a comrade that wants to live off potatoes.  The roasted potatoes were good, just a bit too salty, and when coupled with sausage/mustard, you don't need any more salt! 

This may or may not be weird, but the part of the meal that thrilled me the most was the Natedogs mustard.  Holy moly.  You know you're into something awesome when you're mentally rationing a condiment vis-a-vis how many approximate bites of sausage you have on your plate. Rachel, talking to self, "Okay, three piles of mustard, roughly 15 bites of sausage left on my plate, but one mustard dollop is significantly depleted, how far can I stretch this mustard? Do I use it on the potatoes? Do I tie it chiefly to the sausage experience?" I credit the fact that I left half the potatoes on my plate to the fact that I ran out of mustard. For the sake of my hips, it's probably good they didn't provide more of this glorious condiment. Courtesy of a quick Twitter conversation, in which I inquired as to whether this stuff is for sale, I was informed that mustard sales are on the horizon, maybe a few months down the road. If I'd been given a date for the sale, I really think I would have added that date to my calendar.

That's how serious the mustard is, y'all, it would be worthy of my inputting the date of its sale into my phone. 

Suffice it to say, Republic is definitely worth being added to the Uptown repertoire, even if it requires this 30-something to pay for parking and fight traffic with children who have to be carrying fake IDs. I'd do it for the beer.  I'd do it for the mustard. 

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