The Great American Beer Hall
Pizza and beer may be the all time greatest flavor combination, but it tastes even better when it's served up in a super fun setting like the Great American Beer Hall in Medford.
This place is absolutely gigantic. It holds 1100 people. There's almost no restaurant in the state that holds that many people. It's the size of the Kowloon.This place has bands, games, line dancing, a big schedule of events. There's just always something going on.I find a lot of times at a beer hall, the food is kind of an afterthought. But here, Chef Nick Dowling is really serious about creating delicious food that pairs perfectly with great beer. They call the food operation here The Lantern.
“The Lantern is the Great American Beer Halls in house restaurant. We're contemporary American themed. We do our specialty is our brick oven pizzas. We have our two giant roto flex pizza ovens.
Great food, great beer, great time.”
Of course, the main attraction here is the beer. There are 30 on tap and 14 in the can. They're always curating and rotating the selections. Almost all of them are local, with the idea being, if you try one here that you like, you can drive right to the brewery and get a whole bunch more.
“The beer at the Great American Beer Hall, obviously, is our focus. We are an aggregator for all of the local breweries in New England that want to work with us, which is most and we bring in small batch, one off kegs. We bring in large runs, especially seasonal
You never know what you're gonna get. You gotta come in and check us out.”
The colossal pretzel is a must for beer drinkers. It's a 10 ounce Bavarian pretzel cooked with salt and served with pickles, beer cheese and my favorite, that real grainy mustard.
“We have a big hook we stand the pretzel on. Presentation is awesome. You know, it's about the size of a volleyball when it comes out, so everyone sees it as it walks across the floor.
Pretzels and beer are a perfect pairing. They go hand in hand.”
The best shareable drinking food on the menu may be the pulled pork nachos
There's just a lot of things on this plate, besides the tortilla chips. You've got pico de gallo, slow roasted pulled pork, jalapenos, farmhouse cheddar, queso, guacamole, sour cream, cilantro, ancho sauce and smoky barbecue seasoning.
The chicken sandwich seems to be giving the hamburger a run for its money in terms of America's most popular food. Here they make a great one.
“The reason you want to come to the Great American Beer Hall and get spicy chicken sandwich is it is the best chicken sandwich you're gonna find anywhere. Four ounce… all natural chicken breast, our unique in house breading recipe you can't find anywhere else, pairs very well with the Hillsdale American cheese we put on it. The sauce, the spicy pickles are the best…and the sesame seed brioche bun that we put on it toasted in butter, perfect.”
Chef Nick is a virtual Prince of pizza, no relation to the restaurant on Route One. He insisted on getting special pizza ovens from Austin, Texas, one of my favorite food cities.
Then he experimented to get the dough exactly right for 10 months to create what he is calling Boston brick oven style pizza.
Chef Nick actually tried 40 different kinds of pepperoni until he found the absolute perfect one.
“For the pepperoni specifically, we got in a 38 millimeter Liguria, Old World, nitrite free pepperoni. When you throw it in the oven to 700 degrees, it crisps up into a nice little cup so you get a crispy cut pepperoni, holds a little bit of grease in it, which we like.”
My First Boston brick oven style pizza. I think it's a hit.
The white clam pizza here is really something different and delicious.
This pie has no red sauce. It features those briny clams, salty bacon and raw sweet corn….
You have the soft cheese and the crispiness of the corn. It's like a white clam pizza out of Connecticut with a little crunchy twist.’
“When you bite into our white clam and sweet corn pizza, you get your mozzarella cheese, the salty clam, the nice sweetness of those little corn kernels, pecorino cheese, and then you get your bacon umami. It all mixes together very well, and we finish it with a little bit of lime over the top, just to cut through that cheese.”
If there's any better flavor pairing than pizza and beer, it's waffles and ice cream here, it's a Belgian waffle with chocolate ice cream and some whipped cream. They use real pearl sugar, so when they cook it up, it gets extra crunchy and delicious.
“The Belgian Pearl waffle is really what stands out in that dish, the big chunks of pearl sugar when you bite in, you get that sweet crunch, along with the toasted flour from the waffle, chocolate and ice cream melts into it, so you get little pockets of ice cream melted in. It's a great product.”
Like the country itself, this place is big and bold and has a lot of diverse offerings. And it's a place I want to be the Great American Beer Hall in Medford.
