Opening Tonight: The Butcher and the Brewer

Oh, Boilermaker, we hardly knew ye… And tonight, that doomed concept (which replaced a different doomed concept, the Blue Bear Tavern), will be washed from our collective memory with the opening of The Butcher & The Brewer–another project from the Farmers’ Cabinet team, which should tell you all you need to know about our confidence level in this new iteration.

But still, we should be hoping for the best, right? So here’s what to expect from the cocktail lounge, beer bar and meatery being run by Jennifer Choplin (ex of Watkins Drinkery) in the kitchen and star barman Jeremy Osslund on the floor.

For starters, there’s the bar. Under the watch of Jeremy Osslund, there will be 40 American craft brews on tap and a hand-crafted cocktail program. Also, they’re promising 20 wines by the glass. Not on the board? Artsy custom boilermakers, which was the hook of this bar’s predecessor. That’s probably a good thing.

In the kitchen, the menu is focused first on the charcuterie and cheese, with an opening board of finochionna, duck prosciutto, pancetta tessa and tasso ham, set up against some Roaring 40’s blue, Tallegio and a Cabot cloth-bound cheddar (which, not for nothing, is an excellent cheese).

Beyond the snacks, it’s a fairly basic board, with a meat-and-two-veg theme where customers choose a meat, automatically get a salad, and then choose two sides from the menu. This leads to combinations like a poussin with herbs de Provence butter, a side of endives au buerre with goat cheese and lemon, and a slab of pumpkin bread pudding topped with pumpkin custard, or perhaps a nice lamb pie with a root vegetable gratin and sauteed watercress with garlic cream.

Doors open tonight at 5pm. The kitchen is open ’til midnight, but will still pump out charcuterie plates until 1:30 in the morning. Check it out while you have the chance.

Butcher and Brewer Menu (PDF)
The Butcher & The Brewer [Official website]