The first time I went to Cellarmaker I was post-ride -- the particular kind of hungry and…read moredehydrated that makes any beer taste like the best beer you've ever had, which is why I don't fully trust that first impression. But the West Coast IPA was good, genuinely good, and the pizzas coming out of the kitchen to the tables around me looked like pizzas made by people who cared about pizza, and the outdoor area was the kind of setup that welcomes bikes and dogs without making a production of it. I made a mental note: come back sometime for food.
"Sometime" turned out to be yesterday, which is how it always works, the places you mean to return to in a week take three months, and the ones you expect to take three months surprise you on a random afternoon when you're starving and nearby and out of excuses. We'd taken the dogs on a long hike through Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park, which if you haven't done it is one of those East Bay hikes that makes you briefly forget you live in an urban area -- redwoods and eucalyptus and creek crossings and the kind of quiet that resets whatever the week did to you. By the end of it we were the specific kind of famished where menu deliberation is impossible and you just point at things and hope.
We sat outside and pointed at things and everything we pointed at was excellent.
The baked sweet potato--a Japanese sweet potato under miso butter, chili crème fraîche, bacon bits, crispy onions, scallions, and pea tendrils--is the kind of dish that sounds like it was assembled by a committee of trendy adjectives but actually works as a coherent thing you want to eat. The miso butter does the heavy lifting, that sweet-savory bridge that makes Japanese sweet potatoes sing, and the chili crème fraîche keeps it from tipping into cloying territory. Fifteen dollars for a side dish at a brewery is a number that would normally make me flinch, but the portion was generous and the execution was real.
The summer squash tostadas--roasted zucchini, cherry tomatoes, avocado, pickled red onion, salsa macha, queso fresco, cilantro--were bright and crunchy and exactly the kind of thing you want after four hours in the woods. The salsa macha brought a nutty, smoky heat that elevated what could have been a forgettable veggie tostada into something I'd actually order again on purpose.
And then there were the pickled vegetables. Cauliflower, fennel, zucchini, carrots. Seven dollars. Who pickles zucchini? Cellarmaker pickles zucchini, and it's delicious, and I'm annoyed that I now have to rethink my entire understanding of what belongs in a pickle jar.
I had the Diamonds & Gasoline, a West Coast IPA with Nelson Sauvin and Cascade Cryo hops. The menu copy promises white wine and gooseberry and diesel-y grapefruit funk. What I'd tell you is that it's dank. Good dank. The kind of resinous, piney, vaguely illicit West Coast IPA that California does better than anywhere and that Northern California in particular has turned into a regional art form. I drank it and thought about the fact that I've started using the word "dank" to describe beer unironically and that I voluntarily hiked through redwoods on a Sunday afternoon and that I'm sitting outside a brewery in Berkeley with two dogs at my feet eating a Japanese sweet potato with miso butter on it. I am becoming a Northern Californian. This is happening. I lament nothing.
The pizza will have to wait for the third visit. Wednesday, maybe -- they do a $12 slice-and-beer special that sounds like exactly the kind of deal that accelerates the conversion.
