Rant/Rave: The Schlafly Locations
Posted: October 23 14, 10:57 am
Luke's comment about Schlafly Bottleworks inspired this.
The Tap Room is one of my very favorite places in the city. Every time I go, I have a really hard time ordering because everything on the menu looks great. I also have a really hard time choosing beer for the same reason. You can't go wrong no matter what you choose. It's in the heart of the city, it's really good beer made locally, I love the menu, and the building just feels like all of the good things about St. Louis.
Then... there's the Bottleworks. When you make a copy of something, it's not going to look as good, right? It's very similar but slightly off in a way that degrades the original. That's the Bottleworks.
The atmosphere is good, and the location is perfectly fine. The service is good. No problems there. But the menu is the opposite of the Tap Room. At the Tap Room, I can't decide because there are too many things I want. At the Bottleworks, I can't decide because there's nothing that I really want, at least not without substituting half the order for other things. The beer selection is good compared to, say, a standard bar, but it's nowhere near as good as the Tap Room. And as Freed pointed out the other day, they tend to ignore the specialty beers, fixating on only the crazy over-hopped stuff that I don't want anything to do with.
I really wish the Bottleworks could be more like the Tap Room. If they had the same menu, I'd be there all the time since they're much closer to me than the Tap Room.
The Tap Room is one of my very favorite places in the city. Every time I go, I have a really hard time ordering because everything on the menu looks great. I also have a really hard time choosing beer for the same reason. You can't go wrong no matter what you choose. It's in the heart of the city, it's really good beer made locally, I love the menu, and the building just feels like all of the good things about St. Louis.
Then... there's the Bottleworks. When you make a copy of something, it's not going to look as good, right? It's very similar but slightly off in a way that degrades the original. That's the Bottleworks.
The atmosphere is good, and the location is perfectly fine. The service is good. No problems there. But the menu is the opposite of the Tap Room. At the Tap Room, I can't decide because there are too many things I want. At the Bottleworks, I can't decide because there's nothing that I really want, at least not without substituting half the order for other things. The beer selection is good compared to, say, a standard bar, but it's nowhere near as good as the Tap Room. And as Freed pointed out the other day, they tend to ignore the specialty beers, fixating on only the crazy over-hopped stuff that I don't want anything to do with.
I really wish the Bottleworks could be more like the Tap Room. If they had the same menu, I'd be there all the time since they're much closer to me than the Tap Room.
