Big Al's Harvest Ale and a light cider
Finally, the work week ended. Rena and I attempted to race home to catch as much Porterhouse happy hour as possible. Of course everyone else on the road had similar designs. We got to the neighborhood with just 15 minutes to spare, which meant—bastards!—only one beer at the super $3 HH rate. Figures. It was par for the course for the crappy week.
Porterhouse pub is easily the coolest place outside of the West Seattle Junction, and cooler than most places there, too. And that’s just for its fine, 28-tap beer selection. The cheap happy hour pints are gravy. The fantastic food and friendly staff? Gravier gravy. It’s no wonder the place has been packed every night we’ve visited.
First pint: Big Al’s Harvest Ale. Rena opts for a cider. Ahh. The weight of the last five stressful days begins to slip with the first taste. The Harvest isn’t as hoppy as I’d expected; it’s a little sweet for my taste. But who’s complaining?
The plan was to stick to beer and have dinner at home—the eggplant we’d picked up at Sunday’s farmers market wasn’t getting any fresher—but halfway through the Big Al’s offering, hunger prevailed and I ordered the House Fries. I cap them because they aren’t your average French fries. These are barely-crispy, tossed-in-parmesan-and-truffle-salt wonders. Served with curry ketchup. And of course I ask for a side of their cheddar ranch.
As we trade parting remarks for the week that was, Porterhouse fills up. With couples our age, families of six, and parents (our age) with their small children. “Our booth,” as we like to call it, is really a half-booth just inside the door at the front window, so we see everyone filing in. As I sip pint two, a wondrous, citrusy/bitter Lagunitas concoction, Little Sumpin Xtra, a baby girl perched on her father’s shoulder looks down at us with what seem like incredibly perceptive baby eyes. She stares and blinks at us; we stare and smile at her. Strangely enough, she’s wearing a knit eggplant cap, its little green stem sticking straight up from her crown.
“What if our kid didn’t like what we like?” Rena asks, apropos of our frequently chatted-about plans to get into a house and then get into a family way. It’s a great question, one our pregnant friends may contemplate often. “Wouldn’t that be strange?”
It would be. We wonder about that, in sweeping terms—movies, art, food, clothes, beer—for a couple of minutes, between meeting eyes with the eggplant-head baby. It’s about that time that we start to feel guilty for not ordering dinner. We’re odd.
“Like music,” Rena says, looking to me from the baby retreating with her parents toward a table. “What if it liked that one guy?”
“Michael Buble?” I have no idea what the guy sings, but I do know I don’t like it.
It’s exactly who she meant. “Yes!” We get a good laugh out of that.
“And that other guy,” she adds.
“Josh Groban?”
It’s another match.
The mental serendipity, laughter, and now full-freedom feeling of Friday night eclipses our guilt. I order a Boundary Bay Double Dry-hopped IPA and we stick around a while longer.
