Lucky Girl Brewing Crossroads
34016 M-43Alright. Back to Michigan. I had to take a blogging break after that string of Chicago posts….but we’ve hit up some new restaurants lately so I got something you might be interested in again.
Breweries and food. Some people think breweries don’t need food, but that usually doesn’t work for us. There’s also a huge debate happening on the interwebs and tweeters about kids in taprooms. It’s pretty clear that the breweries that serve food tend to welcome kids while the ones that don’t kind of tap dance around the issue.
Personally, I don’t see the point in dragging my kids to a taproom without food. I used to go to the bar with my dad when I was little but we’d play shuffleboard or pool while he hung out with his buddies. I don’t see anything wrong with that, it’s just not something I’m going to make my kids do. It was always fun for a while but then the quarters ran out.
J had to work this past Saturday so our day kinda got thrown out of whack. I had just noticed a brewery I’ve been wanting to go to beefed up their food menu a little bit and suggested it for lunch, but J was tired and wanted to take a nap. When dinner time got close, she asked if we should chance it for dinner. I figured why not.
Lucky Girl Brewing company opened at Armstrong Corners north of Paw Paw. The brewery sits right on the corner of the intersection between M-43 and M-40. I feel like the old barn this brewery now occupies used to be an antique mall. I know one of the smaller buildings next to it was, at one time, The Outpouring Coffee House.
Lucky Girl opened up last fall but they have been brewing beer for about four years now. They’re beer is was brewed through a contract with Susquehanna Brewing Company in Pennsylvania for packaging but they’re roots are here in Southwest Michigan. Now that they have their own space, all the beer is made on site in Paw Paw. The The brewmaster was head brewer at Gonzo’s BiggDogg Brewing for a while. [Correction: 6/6/18 – I initially wrote their beer was still brewed in PA sourcing the Gazette article from pre-opening. I’ve been told that is wrong and beer is brewed in house now. I’ve updated this paragraph to reflect that.]
The theme of the restaurant is very Americana. There are World War II pictures hanging on the walls and even the logo features what looks to be a 1940’s pin-up girl. The dining room is filled with large picnic tables for bigger groups and smaller four tops with white wooden deck chairs.
The bar is wrapped in metal sheeting and surrounded with unique wood and metal frame pub stools. There are a couple TV’s in the area so it still has the pub feel if you’re just in for a few drinks.
The space is very bright, and open with large garage doors leading to the patio which wraps around one corner of the building. One side is more relaxed with Adirondack and deck chairs for sipping beer in front of the fire place.
The other side has round picnic tables which is connected to a small yard with a cornhole game set up. It was such a nice night, we chose to sit at one of the outside picnic tables with the hopes of keeping the kids entertained, quiet, and out of everyone’s hair.
A waitress followed us to the table with a beer list. Lucky Girl has a pretty diverse tap list and even had a couple of ciders for J. I passed on the flight this time because I really wanted something to sip and enjoy.
The first beer I picked was Slow Madness. This fruity pale ale is brewed with New Zealand Motueka hops. I was looking for a good, simple, sipable beer and I found it with this one.
J’s first pick for a drink was the Lucky Girl Blueberry Beauty Hard Cider. It’s pretty easy to figure out what this one is. The cider is a sweet apple with blueberries added in.
The reason it took us so long to get to Lucky Girl is because of the food. They’ve had food from the beginning, but it used to only be a couple of BBQ options and they didn’t seem to really advertise it. Their old website had this warning on the small food menu.
PLEASE NOTE – Lucky Girl Brewing Crossroads is first and foremost a brewery. We do serve excellent barbeque and other delicious snacks that complement our beers but when the food runs out – it runs out. We are all about CRAFT BEER!
That makes it sound like the food takes a back seat. I was always hesitant to drive out there and find out they weren’t serving food. However, I noticed on their new website last week their menu seemed to be bigger than I had seen in the past so we figured it was worth the gamble.
I picked the Two Meat Platter and chose brisket and pulled pork then did potato chips and mac and cheese as my side.
The brisket was the winner on this plate. It was super soft and tender with a good salty bark. I had a hard time picking the meat up because it just fell apart every time I tried. This is how brisket is supposed to be done.
The pulled pork was a lot like the brisket. It was tender, it was juicy, and there was a big mound of it on the plate.
The flavor was good on it’s own. It had a nice bark in some places, but pulled pork is a really good vehicle for sauce and Lucky Girl had four of it’s own that were brought out before the meals came out. I passed on the white and mustard sauce. I’m never a fan of either of those. The sweet one was delicious. Lot’s of sweetness with just a hint of heat. The spicy sauce was about the same but it amped up that heat
The mac and cheese is pretty interesting. It’s penne noodles and an orange cheese sauce. Not organge like Kraft Mac & Cheese but orange like there’s either some of their BBQ rub or sauce mixed in with the cheddar sauce. It is an interesting, delicious take and mac and cheese. It had much more of a BBQ flavor than a cheesey flavor which I really liked.
The potato chips were simple, out of the bag, salt & vinegar chips. Again, quite a big portion and they were tasty so no complaints about that.
Quickly, back to the mac and cheese for a second. We got both kids an order as well. J was a little better about eating it than B. To be fair, it was a little spicy and neither of my kids do spicy yet. It wasn’t so bad that L couldn’t eat it, but we had to push the issue a little bit. B’s only two and a half so he’s still pretty sensitive and wouldn’t touch it. He ended up eating some of my potato chips and some tortilla’s off L’s plate as well.
J picked the Pulled Pork Nachos with Beer Cheese. This shareable plate is piled high with tortilla chips, pulled pork and a creamy, delicious beer cheese sauce. Luckily for me, this was more than one person can eat on their own, so B and I helped her finish it off. The beer cheese really made this dish something out of the ordinary. There’s not a lot of toppings on the chips but what is there is all fantastic stuff.
As we were finishing up our meals, we ordered a couple of more drinks. It was such a nice night to sit outside. Had the kids been acting a little better, it would have been slightly more enjoyable…but they’re kids I suppose.
My second beer was Dramanow. This is an interesting one They call it a Chocolate Wheat Ale. The chocolate is definitely there but not overpowering. It has a kind of roasty flavor to it. It’s not a typical sessionable wheat beer but it is tasty.
J got the other cider on the menu. This one is a simple one called Lucky Girl Happy Apple Hard Cider. It’s everything you want in a cider. It’s simple and sweet. It was kind of the perfect after dinner drink.
The bill for our meal was right around $55 and it came in a really cool tin case that held the paper, the card and the pen. Different than the typical leather folder.
Lucky Girl Brewing Company was a little bit of a surprise. I always sort of got the feeling they didn’t put that much effort in to the food but I was flat out wrong. They have delicious BBQ…delicious, delicious BBQ. The drinks were all great, but it was the BBQ that really has me wanting to go back.
SW Michigan Dining 