Bay Area Beer & Bar Report
No. 1: Ugly Musings at the Toronado
Over a Drake's IPA
by Babar Ali
Lower Haight, San Francisco, just up from the infamous corner of
Haight and Fillmore, scene of so much of San Francisco's best and worst and
generally representative. All worth thinking about at the Toronado. Awesome
atmosphere, except when choked with cigar smoke, which is not infrequently.
One of the downsides of the untrendy-yet-hip feel of this bar. Worth
putting up with,
while slurping a pint as the clatter of some generic post-punk-goth-metal-hop
hybrid drones in the foreground. After a day of getting wired and frantic
at the spectacle of your own inability to write, this place is a balm
upon the raw wound of your literary incompetence.
And you come here for two reasons: the place, and whatever they
currently have on tap at the rear of the bar, with their array of
British pub-style hand pumps. This evening's offering was a
Drake's India Pale Ale, pulled as I watched, allowed to settle, and served
with a solid inch of foam. Points off for that, but if you order a
hand-pull, it's only fair to make some allowance. And only $3.25; not bad
at all. The Drake's wasn't cellar temperature which means, by British
standards, around fifty to fifty-five degrees, and this was warm; not even
close to the San Francisco chill of a foggy July day, windy, clammy,
and dank, the kind of day that makes you want to curl up with a heavy pint of
not-too-cold beer...but colder than this.
Service is only okay, but it isn't pretentious or offensive, and doesn't
play too many power games--well, maybe a few--designed to test for yuppie
response,
and to see what stripe you are. If you're patient, tip a buck on your first
pint,
and scribble away inoccuously in a corner, or let a red-stained eye stray
over the bar newspaper, you'll do fine. Watching through the well-screened
front windows allows you the obligatory Heart of Lower Haight view: a
panorama of crack runners sizing up the evening's territory, a few beggars
and drunks vying for sidewalk space with early diners and art students
hurrying home to get wasted, cheaply.
Good beer, even if warm. Great color--cloudy caramel, but
appealingly so, not the way Hefeweitzens can be. Maybe under-hopped a bit,
but with the right chill, this brew could be exquisite.
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