The soup, ladled into a vintage glass bowl, is deep orange, with a green swirl on top. Each spoonful is silky smooth; the flavor, like a garden of spring carrots sprinkled with coriander. Hold on a sec – am I really inside a bar?
The soup is merely one of Stonefly Brewing Company’s interpretations of bar food. For those batter-is-better fanatics, there are fried chicken wings with barbecue or hot sauce, deep-fried bacon with stout mustard and crisp steak fries with cheese sauce. And because a bar without a burger is like a tap without beer, there are four ways to top a chewy ciabatta roll.
But let’s go back to that carrot and coriander creation for a moment – the bowl resting 0on a simple wooden table, in the shadow of a ’50s retro lamp and a stack of alternative publications. Stonefly, run by former Barossa co-owner Julia LaLoggia, has a complex personality. This Riverwest bar has its contingent of young, mop-topped hipsters languidly sipping the house brews in a haze of smoke of their own making. Or shooting pool under a luminous pendant light. But there’s nothing set in stone, so to speak, about the feel to Stonefly. Middle-agers could be digging into the Riverwest Grille (above left) while reading the paper in the nonsmoking area. And looking reasonably content.
While the menu does offer “cheese and sausage on a plank,” another faction is in bed with bean curd. Tofu wingers, anyone? (above right) Trade your beef for a Sloppy “Jofu” sandwich? Stonefly uses a surprisingly tasty, firm tofu on the “smack-down” mac and cheese (chicken or bacon available, too), with spicy beer-cheese sauce ($6.50). And don’t knock the “Jofu” sandwich until you’ve tried it. With the barbecue sauce dominating the tofu, it’s more about the texture of the tiny cubes of bean curd – soft and bumpy, and strangely appealing ($5.50).
In the end, though, I prefer something a little more, well, meaty. Topped with bacon, avocado and Stonefly Stout barbecue sauce, the grilled half-pound burger is just what I mean – it packs flavor and juicy girth between those two pieces of ciabatta bun ($8.50). Cheesy fries, as gluttonous as they are, are the best way to achieve something akin to nirvana. (The celery-root mashed potatoes are just too bland; the warm, chunky applesauce is delicious, but a little too much like dessert.) I like saying “Chicken Pot Pie and I Don’t Care” as much I enjoy eating this mom-bomb of a dish, $7.25. (And that’s honestly what they call it on the menu.) You really have to dig for the filling. The creamed peas, chicken and carrots are at the bottom of a tottering hill of celery-root mashed potatoes and a flaky, puff pastry biscuit.
Besides teaching me that being a nonhipster in a hipster bar is OK, Stonefly shows that tofu and beer do mix. In Riverwest, anyway.
Stonefly Brewing Company, 735 E. Center St., 414-264-3630. Hours: 5-10 p.m. daily. Prices: appetizers $3.50-$6.50; burgers, sandwiches $5.50-$8.50; pub fare $6.50-$9.50; desserts $3.50-$4.50. Service: young, friendly. Handicap access: Ask for assistance. Nonsmoking section: yes. Credit cards: M V A. Reservations: not needed.
