Odin Brewing is a Tacoma beer bar and cafe really worth preserving
Tickled with roasted garlic and a medley of Italian herbs that sneaks into just about every bite, the crust of Odin Brewing’s pizza is beholden to two crucial factors: beer and the gasoline-powered Wooden Stone oven that idled for months right after The Hub vacated the 6,000-square-foot space at 203 Tacoma Ave. S.
These unexpected flavors are a pleasurable jogging theme of govt chef Kristen Lyon’s menu at this new brewpub, which opened, relatively quietly, in June. Out of doors seating continues to be open up by way of latest COVID-19 constraints, as well as takeout 5 times a week.
Downstairs, with an entrance off St. Helens Ave., Northwest Brewing at the same time took more than the outdated Harmon Brewing room with a relaxed taproom serving savory pies from a Seattle bakery, aptly identified as Pint & Pie.
Lyon and her 5-particular person kitchen staff embarked on an ambitious foods system that has been mildly derailed by the pandemic — she expected rolling out a retail current market with packaged sauces and pasta, for occasion, for straightforward at-residence foods. However she continue to believes in that plan for the prolonged-time period, for now they are concentrated on serving from-scratch foodstuff to diners exterior and at dwelling.
They make meatballs and lasagna noodles and orecchiette for a preferred mac and cheese with a rosemary cheddar. The Cubano’s pulled pork involves two times of marinating, adopted by a 6-hour reduction that reinvigorates the meat.
The summer time menu, not out there now but a hint at Lyon’s strategy, showcased playful appetizers like “cheese crack,” housemade pimento cheese that arrived with a pinwheel of Ritz crackers, and the group favourite pickle pie, a white pizza with ribbed pickle chips, red onion and skinny strips of bacon. Sprinkled conservatively with dill, this pizza exemplifies Lyon’s ethos in the kitchen: “simple, delectable, accessible, but just a very little little bit various.”
“The pickle became the pumpkin,” Lyon lately confessed, referring to the present-day Pumpkin Pie pizza with butternut squash, goat cheese and prosciutto atop a pumpkin cream sauce. “I do not at any time want it to be 20 distinctive pizzas. I want it to be 6 pizzas and just one adjustments, or a few improve. It keeps persons coming back, and retains personnel and kitchen workers concerned and not stagnant.”
That method, she said, has captivated to start with-time friends and resonated with return customers during the summer season and slide.
What continues to be steady is the pizza dough, which ferments for at the very least 24 hours and is hand-stretched to order before paying out eight to 10 minutes in a 550-degree Fahrenheit brick oven. This temperature permits the undercarriage to acquire a crispiness, whilst retaining a “nice doughy crust” akin to focaccia. The beer’s pure sugars also impart a sweetness you will not obtain in the tang of sourdough or a straight-yeast mix.
It is a slender-crust pizza, not as New York as Salamone’s but not as nearing-Neapolitan as Tacoma’s other new brewery pizzas at E9 and Sig, which also opened earlier this 12 months.
ODIN BREWING, FROM TUKWILA TO TACOMA
Odin Brewing founder Dan Lee and Lyon equally lamented the strife of this yr but expressed gratitude for the Tacoma group getting welcomed them as most effective it can.
Regardless of obtaining a key place with a watch of the bay and a large house for non-public activities, stated Lee, “There is the harsh reality of functioning in these situations.”
In the early days of Odin Brewing, nearly a decade ago, prior to microbreweries dotted the American map, he had one particular intention: make “great beer built with wonderful foodstuff in mind.”
The brewery moved to its Tukwila production house in 2014, wherever meals “played next fiddle to the beer,” he stated. It went a thing like this: He wanted to have a taproom. Then visitors questioned for snacks, so he arranged for meals trucks to satiate the masses. Now the room properties a kitchen that, pre-pandemic, churned out sandwiches and other beer-helpful foods.
Odin Tacoma has not only bolstered but expounded on that mission, revealing a glimpse of what it could grow to be after individuals can flock to the significant-ceilinged, brick-walled restaurant in after-operate droves.
Depending on how the following handful of months unfold, stated Lee, brewing will begin in the downstairs manufacturing room, fingers crossed, by 2022.
ODIN BREWING TACOMA
▪ 203 Tacoma Ave. S., Tacoma, 253-301-3636, odinbrewing.com
▪ COVID-19 hours: Wednesday-Sunday 1-8 p.m. (open right up until 9 p.m. Saturday)
▪ Menu: starters $6-$12, pizzas $16-$27, burgers/sandwiches $10-$16, entrees $16-$20
▪ What to hope: heated, included out of doors seating get takeout online
