The Pike Brewing Company. A Spicy Peppered Bloody Mary.

This place is hip.  It's a brewery.  It's in a basement.  It's in the super cool Pike Place Market.  And the bar area is massive.  Oh, and for some reason it exudes all the comforting aspects of that early 90's best friend's parents' dingy basement where you played video games and  drank Mountain Dew until the wee hours of the morning.  Not in an actual replicating sort of way, but somehow in a reminiscent feeling of a better, younger time.  The bar area itself actually consists of a traditional looking bar and a back room with self seating tables.  You'll want to head there and bypass the perpetually long wait for restaurant seating.  Find yourself a menu, and then head to the bar to order.

XXXXX Rated Peppered Mary

You could get a regular bloody mary, which is basically a less spicy version sans the beer float, or you could get the specialty "XXXXX Rated Peppered Mary," which I just called the Peppered Mary, because let's face it, it's just obnoxious to say "X" that many times.  The menu describes this bloody as "House infused Pepper Vodka, Pike's hand crafted Bloody Mary mix, a splash of Gold Medal winning Pike XXXXX Stout, with a dash of Bonache, a sexy hot sauce form Ballard.  With salted rim and lime."  Strange choice of punctuation and capitalization aside, this sounded damn fine.  The pepper vodka and Bonache hot sauce combination produced a very spicy but very flavorful bloody mary.  A more savory thick tomato base stood up to the extra heat and provided a solid base to transport the peppery flavors.  My only issue was with the stout.  With this much heat, the bitter depth of the stout just didn't come through.  In fact, if I didn't already know it was there, I wouldn't have picked it out at all.  I imagine a bigger stout "splash" would have complemented  the sweeter tomato and spicier vodka counterparts rather well.   Unfortunately, the the name sake ingredient was lacking.  And well, the garnish was just boring.

Damn Fine Pub Food

I must mention that the food here was well above your standard pub fare quality, especially the Grown Up Grilled Cheese sandwich.  I mean, they probably just soaked the whole damn thing in butter, but it was really, really tasty.  In other words, stick to the food, stick to the beer, but maybe pass on the bloody unless you're really craving a mouth-burning treat.

For its spicy, pepper infused bloody mary, The Pike Brewing Company receives 3 Celery Stalks.

The Pike Brewing Company 1415 1st Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101. T: (206) 622-6044

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