Last night before seeing 'Prometheus' (see previous rant), we ate at a local place I'd always wanted to try but never got a chance to called Smokey Mountain Brewery. Their claim to fame is that they are the main source for all the local craft beer sold by the Copper Celler, and Calhouns. All these local chains are owned by the same people anyway, but I'd never tried this particular outlet before.
The atmosphere is..."well, we have all this space, we might as well serve food to go along with our beer". There isn't much aesthetic, though they've clearly tried to "sports bar" it up with TVs at a lot of the tables and big TVs mounted up on the walls. Sadly, it doesn't quite work, but it's probably "good enough". The staff was pleasant and helpful and all around nice.
The menu is mostly bar food, with steaks, ribs, pizza, and some other pasta dishes for flavor. They make a passing stab at a Vegetarian menu but it falls pretty flat in my opinion. The pizza menu is "pizza/calzone". The sandwiches are standard fair, with a couple of "show burgers" like the Ranch Burger (with ranch dressing). Healthy this place ain't. This place is pretty much known for the beer, so I looked over that menu too.
They had about 10 beers available, divided into three categories: Normal, Premium, and Seasonal. They had different names, but that's what they were, and they were priced accordingly. All the basic varieties of beer were present (pilsner, "light", red ale, porter, brown ale, etc) and they came in Pints or Supermugs at decent prices. To go with my meal I got a "supermug" of their Cherokee Red Ale for $6. First, the mug of beer. It was ridiculously huge, holding at least a liter of booze and it was full to the brim. The beer itself was crisp and not too heavy, with a good "beer" flavor. I enjoyed it very much. The neatest thing is that you can get beer to take home, from bottles up to through kegs, if you so wish. My personal favorite sizes were the 64oz Growler and the 5 Liter mini-keg.
Because I was curious I ordered the Pretzels with Beer Cheese appetizer, which was more expensive than I realized, but hey, what the hell. The pretzels were the big soft kind you'd buy at a hot dog stand, and the beer cheese was excellent, as was the honey mustard it came with. I even saved the honey mustard to go with the fries that came with my Chicken Philly Sandwich. The Chicken Philly was decent, but nothing spectacular. Charlotte ordered a personal Calzone, which was big enough that we could have split it and been happy with that and the appetizer. One of my friends ordered the Reuben, which was actually pretty dang tasty. The fries were good, but not super great. Overall, the food was solid.
All in all, it's a good place to knock back a few local brews while munching on some decent bar food. I give it 3 smiley faces on a scale of 5 frowny faces to 5 smiley faces, and I would recommend that if you are in the area and like beer to try it out. Knock off a smiley face if you aren't a fan of beer.
