Friday, February 5, 2010

Third Corner Update

I posted a few weeks ago that The Third Corner restaurant in Ocean Beach, long an outstanding restaurant for great food and excellent wine values, had added taps. I made it back last week and saw that four taps were added.   The four beers are diverse but I question the glassware and was taken aback at the prices.  The four beers were Ballast Point's Yellow Tail Pale Ale, ubiquitous in San Diego, Boont Amber Ale, Allagash White, and  Unibroue's Maudite.  


For all the great brewers in San Diego, I'd of thought that at least two of the taps would have been local.  Maybe the taps will rotate frequently and the likes of Alesmith, Stone and The Lost Abbey will make an appearance.  I am going to guess that part of the reason why there is only one local brewer is that Boont and Uniborue are distributed by wine distributors, and with The Third Corner being primarily a wine shop these distributors got the first opportunity.   This hypothesis makes sense to me, but it's only a guess, as I have no idea who distributes Boont and Unibroue.  I will see how the taps evolve.  As they are, I am not going to complain about the Allagash (shown at right) and Unibroue selections.

I will bitch about the prices.   You'll probably have to click on the picture to enlarge it, but all the drafts are six and seven dollars.   This is a lot for a draft beer, and the seven dollar Maudite is only 8 ozs.  Note under the bottled beers that a 12 oz Stone IPA is a whopping seven dollars.   It must come in a gilded bottle.  I start to question draft beer prices too much above five bucks, especially for the Ballast Point Pale Ale and any amber ale.

To add to my concern about the prices is the glassware.  As you can see in the picture of the Allagash White above, it is served in a beautiful tulip glass.  The glass is cool, but how big is it?   I spent the entire meal wondering how ripped off I was getting.  I knew at seven bucks I was being over charged, but how over charged?  I might feel better about paying seven dollars if the glass held more than a typical pint.

I bought the beer, which I shared with the Beer Rovette, for the sake of the blog.  I was put off by the high prices.  This beer list is a great reason to buy an excellent, reasonably priced bottle of wine, which The Third Corner has in abundance.   

2 comments:

JHamel said...

Too bad about the beer prices. I had really wanted to get over there after reading about the taps going in on here.

Rational Realist said...

The prices were a let down. I thought the beer would be reasonable like the wine.