Brouwer’s Cafe will celebrate their 21st anniversary on Tuesday, March 24th at the equally iconic Seattle bar the Latona Pub. The Greenlake neighborhood beer bar has been a staple of the beer community and their neighborhood since 1987. The location was once the Latona Tavern but had long since closed and was boarded up when publican Robert Brenlin and an investor group reopened it nearly 40 years ago. The Seattle Met called the Latona Pub “epicenter for local craft beer” and the Seattle Times said it was “one of the earliest champions of the local-beer movement.”
Brouwer’s Cafe was arguably the premiere craft beer bar in Seattle and host of some of Seattle’s top events like the Hard liver Barleywine Festival, Big Wood festival of barrel-aged beers, and Seattle Beer Week events like Sour Fest and Back in Black Stout Fest. Brouwer’s was loved for a vast curated list of 64 craft beers on draft, a selection of over 400 bottles, a great whiskey selection, and a Belgian-inspired atmosphere and gastropub food menu, not to mention the legendary staff that have become important fixtures of the craft beer scene.
Longtime Brouwer’s Cafe manager Nathaniel Pellman and Latona Pub manager Matt Carter have teamed-up to host this nostalgic event that will bring back some of the favorite food dishes, breweries, and people from Brouwer’s Cafe.
“Matt Carter and I have been friends for a while, and he floated the idea after Brouwer’s closed,” explains Pellman. “I didn’t think it could be done because Latona doesn’t have a fryer, and Brouwer’s frites are the thing. I also didn’t think the atmosphere or feel of Brouwer’s could be re-created. They have been putting together great beer/food events for awhile. We kept discussing the idea, critical pieces came together and we decided to just go for it.”…