We found ourselves spending a long weekend in New York over the past few days, specifically just west of Times Square. Considering all the ink spilled and pixels lit up over Guy Fieri’s oft-slammed rednecky, Flavortown bistro – Guys American Kitchen and Bar – I had to check it out for myself.
However, in all the reviews I’ve read (and there has been no shortage of them, in a wave of culinary Schadenfreude unseen since the days of RachaelRaySucks.com) I haven’t seen a substantial discussion of what naturally interests me – the beer.
Go to the restaurant’s website and you’ll see reference to beers, “handcrafted for Guy.” This isn’t just bluster. The beers are brewed by the folks at Heartland Brewery, who apparently have a stake in this location, and are fairly well reviewed on Beer Advocate.
While I can’t speak to whether or not Chef Guy was hands-on with the brewing process; dripping beads of basil-flavored sweat into the kettle and milling his own proprietary blend of, “Off The Chain Grain,”* I can tell you that the results, while mixed, weren’t too bad.
We sampled four of the five beers on Guy’s list. We skipped the lager because, if you drink in enough brewpubs, you’ll find that the lager is nearly always an inoffensive off-the-shelf brew created for those who ask “What’s the closest thing you have to Bud Light?”**
If someone reports back that this is not the case, let us know, but we feel it was a safe bet.
Now, without further ado, the reviews of the beers brewed for Guys American Kitchen and Bar Times Square:
The El Jefe Weizen: Someone could have done something clever with a name like that, perhaps a Mexican riff on a traditional wheat beer brewed with lime or some sort of jalapeno, maybe.
That’s not the case here, sadly, as this hefeweizen was a pretty weak example of the style.
Barely wheat-y and featuring none of the banana and lemon you like to see in one of these. Even the head was weak and quickly disappearing, in contrast to the billowing fluffs of cotton ball dense foam you get in a Julius Ecter, for example. Not recommended.
Amber: We only had a sample taste of this, but it was pretty much absent of flavor; just a little bitter and not much else.
Watery body but the color was nice – deeper brown than a normal amber and a little glow of orange.
Also not recommended.
Red White and Blonde: Here is where we start getting into the good stuff.
This beer was tasty, refreshing, flavorful and well-bodied. In fact, it was pretty much everything you’d expect in a blonde ale. It isn’t a standout, but it definitely is a quality brew.
Sweet without tasting of adjuncts, I could drink this one again (if not for the $7.50 price tag per pint, but hey, Times Square is what it is).
Independence Pale Ale: You might well expect an IPA at this place to have little to no resemblance to the style in deference to an average non-craft-beer palate. But, we have to give credit where it’s due, this is actually quite a pleasantly bitter, hoppy beer.
Supported by a moderate backbone of malt, we get a nice blast of IBU’s on the finish including a unique hit of cracked black pepper, making this the most complex beer we tried, and the most surprising and definitely the most enjoyable.
I bet it gets sent back more than any other “for tasting wrong, and just gimme a bottle of Lite.”
Other than that, our bartender was pretty good once we started sharing tales of wait staff hell and expressed an actual interest in beer. She ended up pointing us in the direction of actual good bars not located in Times Square, for which we thank her profusely.
If you’re searching for a place to have a beer in Times Square, you certainly have your choices available to you (a TGIFridays AND an Olive Garden!) but if you stumble into Guy’s, grab the above beer and you’ll probably do okay for yourself.
*If you havent copyrighted this yet, Guy, look us up. We’ll license them to you for a reasonable fee.
**The answer to that question is actually “Coors Light,” but we digress.