Draft Barn

Standing on Gowanus's foreboding Third Avenue, basking in the glow of a Getty sign, we wondered: Why stray this far from civilization just for a drink? The answer: 250 beers. The exotic brews at the new Draft Barn (despite the name, most are available by the bottle, with a rotating dozen on tap) hail from across the globe. "[We've got] anything you can't get in your local deli," said our server of the quaffs, which are priced between $5 and $100. The milieu is faux Eastern European beer hall: booths and long, dark wood communal tables, stone floors, and a mural of a map of Hungaryon the wall (a nod to the owners' motherland). The staff is knowledgeable, but a bit taciturn and too distracted by the seven blaring TVs (tuned on one occasion to the game show Cash Cab). A drink menu this large will make anyone's head spin, and the owners—who also operate a Draft Barn on Avenue X—could afford to be more forthcoming with the tutorials. We had to interrogate the staff before we got more than one-word responses. The recommendations we did get were golden. Pauwel's Kwak ($9), a rich Belgian amber with a complex fruit-and-berries bouquet, was fantastic, as was the strong, almost winelike Kasteel Triple ($9), another Belgian. A cheaper Lion Stout ($5) from Sri Lanka (!), meanwhile, was a glass of silky chocolate. Part of the fun of ordering unknown beers at Draft Barn is the possibility of sipping out of the specialized glassware many European breweries devise for their products—both the Kasteel and the Kwak were presented as such, with the latter housed in a foot-long, thermometer-shaped vessel, held in place by a wooden stand. The food options skew Eastern Bloc: We enjoyed a hearty goulash ($6) and pickled herring and onions ($7). For a place so beer-obsessed, Draft Barn's vibe is not overly nerdy, with the regular-joe clientele a mix of South Slopers and beer-bellied locals. Now, if the staff could just muster more enthusiasm than a Duane Reade clerk, this so-far-uncrowded hall might pack them in.—TONY

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