Paw Paw Brewing Company
780 S. Gremps StreetJ and I had a few nights without the kids and we wanted to take advantage of eating out without having to entertain them. Monday night we just weren’t feeling it and I had an UberEats coupon so we just ordered in. We didn’t want to repeat that Tuesday night though.
J texted me about an hour before we got off work and said she wanted to go out. I had been wanting to go to the new Paw Paw Brewing Company and asked if that was OK. She was on board.
I got off work a little early then we headed to Van Buren County. I have already written two blog posts about Paw Paw Brewing (2012 and 2018) but a few months ago they moved from their small building on East Michigan Avenue to their production facility on S. Gremps Street on the southwest side of town. The new taproom is in the back of the building. There’s a great outdoor patio right as you walk in but there was some kind of event happening in that space so we had to go inside.
This new taproom is such a huge improvement over the original one. The building on East Michigan had a great, cozy feel but the brewery got too big and too popular. It was hard to get a table and they had outgrown the consumer propane grill they were using to cook burgers outside the back door.
This new space is huge. The taproom is part of a big metal building with cement floors and wood support beams. There’s a large metal paneled bar along one wall and tables spread throughout the space.
Right inside the door there is a merchandise shop with a cooler of bottled beer off to the side.
The walls are lined mug from the mug club each with a unique identifier on the bottom of the mug so they can be easily findable for members.
We were hoping to sit outside when we walked in but that wasn’t a possibility due to the private event happening. We started searching for an open, clean table and found one near the stage on the far side of the room. We sat down and tried to read the taplist from our seats but the chalkboard hanging above the bar was hard to read. After several minutes, a waitress did finally come over with menus and a beer list.
I didn’t have much problem finding something to drink. I picked the T.T.T.C. NE IPA. The beer is a pretty standard hazy New England IPA. It was enjoyable and very sippable through dinner.
J had a little bit tougher time finding something to drink. There were no ciders on the menu and nothing really sweet. She likes some sours but the only sour they had on tap was a sour version of Bronco Brown which didn’t sound really sweet to her. She eventually settled on Wild Witty’s Rhubarb Saison. She liked the beer but really wish there was some kind of cider or mead or at least some kind of sweet beer on tap. She was really looking forward to a drink and Paw Paw didn’t really have anything she liked which proved to be a little disappointing.
Our waitress dropped off our drinks…then walked away. We had already been sitting there several minutes and we both had our menus closed. She proceeded to clean tables around us before coming back ten minutes later to take our order. We were both kind of dumbfounded as to why she didn’t take our order right away and were flabbergasted that she went and cleaned tables instead of taking the order.
She did eventually come back and we were able to get our order in. I ordered the Breakfast Burger. The burger had the taste of a charred frozen patty but the menu claims it to be a 1/3 lb ground prime rib burger. The toppings on this one is what really made this sandwich delicious. The burger was topped with Brie, a sunnyside up egg, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and a chipotle mayo. There is supposed to be haystack onions on it as well but I’m not an onion guy. The Brie and the mayo all kind of melted together and made a delicious sauce on top of the sweet, crunchy bacon and the slightly runny fried egg. The sandwich came with skin on fries on the side that may have been slightly better with a little bit of mustard.
J picked the sandwich called Gremps Grub. This is their take on a pulled pork sandwich with a sweet and tangy BBQ sauce, a creamy slaw, bacon, and provolone cheese. She looked at the sandwich and was afraid to pick it up so she grabbed a fork and went that way. The meat was tender and soaked up that sweet sauce. The surprise of the sandwich was the bacon which had a coating that appeared that it was cooked in maple syrup or something. It was a little sweet on it’s own and very delicious. Her sandwich also came with fries and she asked for a little bit more BBQ sauce so she’d have something to dip them in.
The bill for our meal was a little over $34 before tip.
The meal got off to a rough start but things got better as the meal progressed. The waitress got more attentive and we got our check pretty quickly. The wait to order weighed pretty heavily on our impression of the place but if we talking about just the food and drinks, I think we were both pretty big fans of Paw Paw Brewing and really big fans of this new space. A few minor tweaks and it easily becomes the type of place we could meet friends for a few beers and some delicious food.
SW Michigan Dining 