In the previous two days of our trip, I was dazzled by the variety of beers available. I was at times paralyzed by choice! A good problem to have, I guess. Today, we scaled it back a bit.

Places visited:

• Golden Road Brewing (Glendale)
• Night + Market Song (Silverlake)

Golden Road Brewing

Golden Road Brewing was featured on the Brew Dogs LA episode (Season 2 Episode 10). It was really cool to see this place in person. Let’s get day-drunk!

Spacious, noisy, bustling, family-friendly.

You seat yourself and servers come around to help you

Good range of core beers.

They had two guest beers that day plus a pear cider.

Good selection of beer food.

Pretzel Mac sounds good…

…and to be “healthy”, we ordered the beer-battered Fried Roman Artichokes.

Unfortunately they were out of their Wolf Among Weeds IPA, but the Berliner Weiss and Carry On Citrus Ale look good!

Berliner Weiss (2.8%) – Great! Mild-to-moderate tartness. Lovely colour. Light, fizzy mouthfeel. Berliner weisses seemed to be the hot style cuz other breweries were also doing berliner weisses. I guess the sunny LA weather is really conducive to these refreshing summery styles of beer.

The “Core Flight”, from right to left (lightest to darkest):

329 Lager (4.8%) – that “lagery” flavour but luckily not too sweet. Grainy, cerealy aroma. I like the clarity.

Hefeweizen (4.6%) – A light ‘n easy hefe. Clean flavours, not muddy. Crisp.

Point the Way IPA (5.9%) – West coast IPA all the way!

Get Up Offa That Brown (5.5%) – Big chocolate notes. Dry, not too sweet. Taking a sip of this and a sip of the Berliner Weiss gave me a cinnamon taste 🙂 Sometimes it’s fun to play beers off each other.

Lots of branded gear for sale.

Some breweries incorporate their spent grain into making bread. This place sends it off to be made into dog treats.

Golden Road were one of the first LA breweries to put their beer into cans.

I wanted to try this, but it was kinda hard to fit into our traveling schedule.

Fried Roman Artichokes served with garlic aioli and spicy marinara sauce. They use Point the Way IPA in the batter.

We think they used pickled artichokes. The coating was crunchy. Perfect beer food. Wicca loved it. Marinara sauce was the winning sauce here. Can’t get enough artichokes. Wicca’s mom makes artichoke tea sometimes too.

Pretzel Mac served in a pretzel bowl and topped with bacon, parmesan and chives.

The mac ‘n cheese was well-seasoned and very cheddary. So glad it wasn’t bland. If you’re gonna do mac ‘n cheese, better make it taste like cheese. The bun was a bit spongy/rubbery but ok to nibble on and to serve as the vehicle.

Carry On Citrus Ale (5.2%) – Brewed with lemon and orange. They must use the whole fruit cuz I got a lot of rind/zest. Pleasantly and mildly sweet on the front, with a long bitter finish, like marmalade (which I hate btw, but love the marmalade-like quality in this beer!). Wow. One of the best fruit beers I’ve ever tasted. They really embraced the bitter citrus, so it’s fruity but not overtly sweet. This particular balance meant I could drink this whole 16oz glass and didn’t feel sick or bored of it by the end. I couldn’t tell where the hops were among the fruity bitterness, so in that way it was a very intriguing and enjoyable beer for me.

Golden Road Brewing is my idea of a brewery that really knows what they’re doing. All the beers I tried were rock solid and great examples of their particular styles. The food was pub grub but done really well. Another winner!

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Night + Market Song

Night + Market Song is a Thai place in Silverlake (aka hipsterville) that serves “Thai drinking food”.

You won’t find the typical rainbow curries here.

I believe this uhhh magazine spread was about this, where some ex-porn star cooked in the restaurant for a day. One of the more unusual pieces of food media I’ve ever seen on a restaurant wall…

This is gonna be a tough review for me to write cuz of the way I was feeling emotionally that night. I was really not in a good place, and it goes to show how internal and external factors can affect the simple enjoyment of food. I’ll try to be fair but I also have to be honest.

Beer list was blah. With the variety of beers available in Los Angeles, there are way more exciting and adventurous yet still accessible beer options for pairing with spicy Thai food. I didn’t order anything to drink but in retrospect I should’ve at least got a Hoegaarden (Belgian Wit) to ease my mood.

This Catfish Tamale dish was highly recommended by one of my trusted Instagrammers, lee.f.man.

Smallish space, tables are small and a bit cramped, but it’s very colourful in here!

An order of Sticky Rice to be eaten with pretty much everything on the menu except the noodles. They recommend using your hands to take a bit of rice and using it to scoop food into your mouth. However, trying to clean sticky rice off your hands with a paper napkin doesn’t work well 🙁 so I resorted to spoon and fork.

My favourite dish of the night, Larb Lanna (Chiang Mai Style Larb), one of seven larb dishes on the menu. I’ve never seen such a variety of larb on a menu before…it was hard to choose, but we chose this one because it contained “dry spice mix hand-carried back from the motherland by Chef Kris”. I got a rich irony-ness from the pork liver and blood that is incorporated into the chopped pork meat. Raw cabbage, green beans and cucumber on the side.

Khao Soi Neua, curried noodles with braised hanger steak. Love the pickled vegetables on the right.

Generous beef. Gravy-like curry was full-flavoured and very enjoyable. Still, I think Longtail Kitchen’s chicken khao soi has more body and depth.

Gai Tod Naeng Noi, fried chicken thighs served with nam prik maengda (waterbug relish!).

The frying was done really well. Crispy on the outside but the meat was a touch dry. Would’ve been much better accompanied by a beer. As it stands, it’s just a slightly unexciting fried chicken dish.

The eggplant relish was scented with steamed and mashed waterbugs but I didn’t get any perfumey or truffley quality from it at all. Coupled with the dryness of the meat, this dish was a disappointment. They might enjoy chicken fried to this degree in Thailand but I didn’t like it.

Hor Ab (Catfish Tamale). Catfish and pork fat baked in banana leaves.

This was by far the spiciest dish we ordered. The chilies and herbs absolutely buried the catfish, but it wasn’t too thrilling to eat the chilies and herbs on their own. Wicca really enjoyed this dish though.

An order of Coconut Rice, which was also sticky, which was a surprise because we were expecting a bowl of typical loose rice.

The damage.

There was an issue inside of me emotionally that I couldn’t shake throughout the whole night and it prevented me from fully participating in this meal…almost like half of me wasn’t even there. My notes from this night totalled three measly lines whereas usually I write 1-2 pages. So sorry, I couldn’t give Night + Market Song my full attention because they’re really trying to do something different, possibly on the level of Andy Ricker and Pok Pok in Portland, but I just really couldn’t give a fair assessment. Hopefully there will be a next time.

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Continue with LA Trip Report Day 4 or go back to the index.