OK, sure there are 700 wines at the subtitled restaurant dp, An American Brasserie - but they have Blue Point Lager, Dogfish 60 and Ommegang's Hennepin and others on tap as well as ten or twelve well selected bottles. The stash in the back of van might be better today at the end of our trip but I had an Aventinus with my NY strip loin. How many places can I do that?
Why were we there? Well, I got tired of hitting the highway hotels on my family trips and picked the moderately priced Hampton Inn in downtown Albany. How downtown? It sits behind the 1640s First Church of Albany. Is there an older continuous congregation in North America? A Catholic institution in Quebec perhaps? Is this now a Good Ecclesiastical Blog? No.
Anyway, the food was great and, after a surprisingly active drive through highway 2 across northern Massachusetts, taking on hairpins and deep gorges, it hit the spot. The kids were well mannered and the staff were good enough to jack up the background jazz a tad and give us a buffer of three tables or so. We do have a loud little one after all. Owner Yono Purnomo took time to say hello and was interested in the beery feedback.
This is the sort of thing we need to encourage. Not an island but a tide. A little good beer everywhere rather than a lot of good beer in a few places. After driving down the cliff east of North Adams, good beer and fine food was just the thing. Does it matter that they didn't have twice the taps or four times the bottles?