Good Southern Living on Tap at The Owl

Owl Tap Room
75 Commerce St.
Apalachicola, FL



Just a few short years ago finding good craft beer in a small Southern town was about as difficult as finding a virgin along Florida State’s sorority row.

Yuengling was about as exotic as it got.

My how things have changed.

For the better.

The Owl Tap Room in the oyster capital of the world, Apalachicola, Florida, is a perfect example.

The beer list spelled out on a big chalk board declares, “Welcome to beer heaven!”

Heaven indeed.

Recently opened as the younger, hipper sister to the frumpy white tablecloth Owl Café next door, the Owl Tap Room sports 15 rotating taps of top notch regional and national craft beers.

And I do mean top notch.

Somebody who knows their beer does the ordering for this place.

Obscure high quality beers from America’s greatest breweries like Ommegang, Bell’s and Southern Tier pour from the taps.

The best beers from Florida and the Southeast are also well represented such as Cigar City in Tampa, Intuition in Jacksonville and Highland in Asheville.

The selection is continually changing as evidenced by the multitude of colorful tap handles hanging from the rafters.

Florida was one of the last states in America to develop a taste for good beer, so finding creative breweries in the Sunshine State can be a challenge.

One of the best is Cigar City. So I was excited to try their High Seas IPA, a flavor I’d never tried before.

Cigar City is famous for its delicious Jai Alai IPA, but this was something different.

Brewed in Ponce, Puerto Rico and then dry hopped with Simcoe hops on its journey back to Tampa in a refrigerated vessel, High Seas IPA has a spicy, fruity snap you’d expect from a top notch IPA.

My Highland Gaelic Ale was a poor choice to follow such a kick-ass brew. There is no way the much more subtle flavors of this ale could match up against a hoppy IPA. But it grew on me as I approached the bottom of the glass.

Next up I had to try Hop House Pale Ale from Ommegang.

Ommegang is a tiny brewery in Cooperstown, New York (home of the Baseball Hall of Fame) that has earned a world renowned reputation. Literally.

Legendary Belgian brewery Duvel was so smitten by the Belgian-style beers being produced by this little Yankee brewery that they bought the damn place.

That’s like Formula One inviting me to race my Toyota Solara in the Monaco Grand Prix.

The Hop House Pale Ale is a hoppy version of a fruity Belgian ale. The Belgian yeast reminds you of the style while the spicy hop finish puts a smile on your face.

Next up I wanted to try the Thomas Creek Porter out of South Carolina but the guy sitting next to me got the last one before the keg blew.

Luckily for me, they replaced it with something even better, Southern Tier 2X IPA, one of my favorite double IPAs from one of my favorite breweries in America. Southern Tier never disappoints.

While my brain could still comprehend what I was drinking, I finished up with pint of Bell’s Smitten Rye, a hoppy pale ale brewed with rye grains, which adds a nice spicy kick.

While clearly beer is the most important item on the menu in the Tap Room, you can also order food.

Good thing too considering all the hops and alcohol flowing through my blood stream.

Of course the reason everyone comes to the tiny town of 3,500 people on the “Forgotten Coast” of Florida is to slurp down fresh Apalachicola oysters.

At the Owl, they proudly serve “13 Mile Brand” oysters.

Most oyster eaters on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts aren’t pretentious enough to fret over oyster brands.

To most southerners, an oyster is an oyster is an oyster.

At most, you might hear them comment about the oyster being “salty” or “fresh”, which varies based on the wind direction and the resulting salinity of the water from which it was plucked.

On the West Coast or at the Grand Central Station Oyster Bar in New York City, you pay four bucks a piece for oysters from specific estuaries and then must commence to pretentiously waxing poetic about the subtle differences.

Here in Apalachicola, if your oyster carries a brand, it will probably be “13 Mile”, which is the only brand sold by The Owl.

13 Mile is the name given to an oyster dock owned for four generations by the Ward family located along Apalachicola Bay which is…you guessed it…

…13 miles from town.

Most days you can catch one of their 13 Mile Brand shrimp boats tied up to the dock downtown.

Maybe I need to become a more pretentious oyster eater because my half dozen raw 13 Mile oysters were some of the biggest, plumpest, most delicious oysters I had in Apalachicola.

Clean, salty and sweet, each slurp was a succulent taste of Apalachicola Bay.

My 13 Mile Brand oysters were like a mini vacation on the half shell.

And at less than a buck a piece, an absolute bargain. After all, if you only have to transport them 13 miles in the back of a refrigerated truck, it dramatically cuts down the transportation costs.

And dramatically ups the freshness.

The fried 13 Mile oysters were excellent too, perfectly prepared to a nice golden crisp. The horseradish dipping sauce was good but unnecessary.

While the menu in the tap room is a bit more modest than in the more formal Owl Café next door, there was a nice selection of options to soak up all that good beer.

I went with the alligator sausage sandwich.

There’s just something fun about eating an animal more dangerous than me.

In the swamp in my backyard I might be at a disadvantage, but here at the Owl Tap Room it was Suit757 at the top of the food chain as I admired the black grill marks on my perfectly charred tube of mashed up gator parts.

The sautéed onions and sauerkraut gave the gator a nice sweet and tangy accent.

Full of beer, oysters and gator, I stumbled out onto Commerce Street a happy man.

I mean I’m always happy after a good meal.

But what put me in an especially good mood was knowing that the craft beer revolution has spread even to this tiny nook of the American South -- one of my favorite destinations of the wide Suit757 map.

A trip to Apalach no longer means a weekend of washing down my oysters with a steady stream of Miller Lite and Yuengling.

In fact, as I crossed the street, I peered into the empty storefront that soon will be “Oyster City Brewing Company”. The folks at the Owl are building their own brew pub!

How cool is that?

Life in the Confederacy just keeps getting better.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

Doing my Part to Contribute to the Bernanke Bubble Economy

Dan and Louis Oyster Bar
208 SW Ankeny
Portland, OR





Signs of the Ben Bernanke Bubble Economy are all around us.

Ten bucks for a ball park hot dog.

Thirteen bucks for a beer at a concert. Forty-five bucks for the t-shirt to prove you were there.

Stores built around selling nothing but eight dollar cupcakes.

When “Helicopter Ben” creates trillions and trillions of dollars out of thin air, it makes the dollars the rest of hold in our wallet and bank account worth less.

That means it takes more and more of those less valuable dollars to buy the things we used to enjoy for a buck or two.

But that’s just okeydokey if you happen to be one of the chosen recipients of all the extra cash -- like government bureaucrats, bankers who are “too big to fail” or federal contractors feeding at the taxpayer trough.

And if you are not one of those chosen recipients?

Not to worry. Your congressman will send you food stamps in exchange for your vote.

Did I tell you that you can now use those food stamps to purchase $35 per pound slabs of organic, grass-fed Kobe beef and free range escargot at Whole Foods?

Do see where I’m going with this?

Whole Foods can sell a lot more Kobe beef for $35 per pound when the Federal Reserve prints money and hands it out to their hand-picked constituents.

And the rest of us chumps who still work for a living?

We’re stuck paying the same bloated prices.

Sucker.

That’s exactly how I felt as I slurped down the first of my thumb-nail-sized raw oysters here at Portland’s Dan and Louis Oyster Bar.

I mean, would you pay $3 to $4 for a midget oyster?

Who does that?

Me. Apparently.

Sucker.

I love my oysters.

It’s about the experience more than sustenance. When traveling to the coastal nooks and crannies of this great country of ours, nothing says seaside fun like a bucket of oysters.

From the placid shores of the Chesapeake to the shade of a Gulf Coast live oak hammock to the wind swept coast of Oregon, oysters bestow a sense of place on the half shell -- a salty shot of the ocean in every slurp.

Oysters are obligatory here in the Pacific Northwest where they have been harvested for the better part of two centuries.

And Dan and Louis Oyster Bar is the obligatory place to try them.

Established as a tiny bar by a local oysterman in 1919, Dan and Louis has old school charm and new school prices.

I almost fell out of my chair when my waiter told me a half dozen oysters on the half shell would set me back $22.

Attempting to justify his Bernanke Bubble price tag, the waiter went into a lengthy genealogical discussion of the oysters I was about to pay almost four bucks a piece for.

Farm-raised in the Hood River Canal, these oysters are sustainable, humanly treated, personally blessed by Pope Francis, yada, yada, yada.

I knew Oregon was the home of craft beer.

But craft oysters??

Yeah. That’s what it sounds like. Pretentiousness has no bounds in Portlandia.

Of course all this was confusing to an East Coast Suit like me.

Back home, when you order oysters, for $30 you get a big old bucket of muddy oysters pulled out of the local waters -- along with a handy oyster knife and a pitcher of Miller Lite.

No one would think to ask “what kind” of oysters.

An oyster is an oyster. And $30 will get you about three to four dozen.

Oh, and where I come from, the bigger the better. Right?

Not on the Left Coast.

Here, it seems the smaller the oyster, the more you have to pay.

My four-dollar-a-piece oysters were so tiny they almost slipped through the tongs of my fork.

That being said, these itty bitty dudes packed a lot of flavor.

My tiny farm-raised Hood River Canal $4 oysters were both saltier and sweeter than their wild East Coast brethren.

Less briny and sandy and more of a pure taste of the ocean, I was glad I splurged for an Oregon “craft oyster”.

Worth $4 per slurp?

Hell, no.

But at least I could say I tried them.

Now that that was over, it was time to order some actual food.

Unlike their itty bitty cousins, fried oysters actually qualify as real food because they are drenched in flour and, well, fried.

For half the price of my raw oysters, I got a plate of gigantic oysters covered in a thick tasty breading.

Bigger oysters. Breading. Fried. Real Food. Half the price.

I was so confused.

Are these oysters that get tossed in the fryer somehow inferior to the Pope Francis blessed nibble-sized oysters?

Maybe. But all I can tell you is they were delicious.

A glistening crispy coating and a zesty remoulade dipping sauce brought out the sweet salty flavor of these ginormous oysters.

I also had to try Dan and Louis’ version of Oysters Rockefeller.

Again, these were decent sized oysters, this time topped with a leaf of spinach and a touch of cheese browned in the oven -- just enough to add some excitement without distracting from the star of the show.

But my oyster feast still wasn’t done.

The most famous dish on Dan and Louis’ menu just might be the oyster stew.

I ordered it with a double order of oysters.

Of course.

I was glad I did. A simple broth of cream, butter and seasoning, the double portion offered up an oyster in almost every bite.

Lacking any distracting -- but tasty -- additions like bacon or onions, this simple stew let the oysters shine through.

I was already sixty bucks invested at this point -- and still hungry.

That’s the problem with eating oysters. Just because they charge you an arm and a leg for them doesn’t mean they count as real food.

My wallet was crying for mercy while was stomach was growling for more.

I solved that problem by ordering a couple cups of chowder, a specialty of the Oregon coast.

The clam chowder turned out to be the highlight of the meal. Creamy, thick and hearty, my stomach went straight from growling to crying “uncle” after just a few spoonfuls.

Loaded with clams, bacon and potatoes, this was filling soup.

The salmon chowder was even thicker, if that is possible. Smokey with generous chunks of pink salmon, I was glad I gave it a try.

Of course it would be a crime against man and nature to enjoy an afternoon of good Oregon oysters and chowder without good Oregon beer to wash it down.

In fact, I’m pretty sure the beer part of the “oysters and beer by the sea” experience is what makes it so enchanting to me.

Come to think of it, I could say the same about all my favorite life’s experiences. But I digress.

As anyone must expect, a famous oyster bar in Portland, Oregon like Dan and Louis offers up some nice local craft beer.

I started with the Alameda Klickitat Pale Ale, a local beer that is dark and hoppy without the braggadocio of an IPA.

It was a nice start, but the Ninkasi Total Domination IPA is what I came to Oregon to drink -- the type of manly, flavor-packed brew Portland is famous for.

Despite the good brew, I was a little let down that the lively and social original 1919 oyster bar up front was packed.

So I was relegated to my grandmother’s living room.

Well, not exactly.

But that’s what the more spacious back dining room reminded me of.

Built in 1937 to look like a ship’s interior, the main dining room is plastered with little pewter tea saucers and nautical knickknacks.

Portholes backlight artistic renditions of Oregon oystermen of yesteryear hauling in their catch.

Grandma’s seaside clutter and ambiance might not have been so depressing if the dining room wasn’t so empty.

A bunch of drunk guys singing in an Olde English brogue “Fifteen men on the deadman’s chest, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum” might have livened the place up a bit.

Then again, maybe I’m glad there were no Eighteenth Century buccaneers dining with me. They’d have staged a violent mutiny when it was time to pay their tab.

Mine came to $92 for two beers, a few oysters and a couple cups of chowder.

Holy crap!

I felt ashamed as I paid my tab.

Ashamed because I was suckered into coughing up a Benjamin for some shellfish?

No. Ashamed because I realized I’m contributing to the very Bernanke Bubble Economy I rant about.

Oh well. I guess I’ll have to go drown my shame in a couple pints of $7 Oregon craft beer.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.