Local
Color Brewing CompanyLocal color is a great place to go if you are looking for good beer, good food, and good entertainment. Not only will you find good beer at local color, but you will find variety. On our last visit, they had the following beers: Social Climber Light Lager, Smooth Talker Pilsner, Old Friend Stout, No. VI Brown Ale, Tomboy Red, and Corporate Jim's Pale Ale. Most of the beers are pretty light in character. None of them offer anything extremely noteworthy but will be liked by many beer drinkers. I found it interesting that they chose to brew a light beer to satisfy the Bud, Miller, and Coors drinkers out there that throw a spaz if they go into a decent brewpub or taproom and only find good beer on the menu instead of mass produced American watery brew. My favorite is the brown, which has a nice mellow flavor and finish. As for food, I have had the fish & chips which was excellent. I highly recommend this dish. On my second visit, I sampled the wiener schnitzel, which was also very good. Our server, Bonnie (who served us on both visits,) was very knowledgeable about beer and was just the perfect server. She informed us of an upcoming IPA, a barleywine was in the works, and they've even made a batch of wine that was aging. The entertainment was excellent as well. We originally stopped in for a meal and some beer but the addictive energy of the band Peacetime (with Warner Bros. recording artist Dave McMurray on sax) was enough to keep us going until closing.
The first thing that struck me about Local Color is the outside of the building. The strip mall where it is located looks much older than it actually is and has much more character than some of the places I have been to recently. Then, I saw that there were hop vines growing on the outside patio and a small herb and vegetable garden growing outside the main entrance with a window view of the kitchen....very nice. Inside the atmosphere can only be described as original. It has the typical yuppie-industrial-art theme but there are three floors, comfy couches, a natural stone bar and a great view of the brewing system (which happens to be state of the art and fully automated). The brewery has live entertainment a few nights a week and we were fortunate enough to catch David McMurray and Peacetime. David was also one of the headline acts at the Detroit Jazz Festival and a major label recording artist. We had seats at the base of the stage and witnessed some of the greatest improvisational music I have ever heard. The second visit we made the entertainment was a cover band that I could have done without. The food was mediocre. First visit I had a wood fired seafood pizza, which was a round wafer of cardboard with hardly any cheese, seafood, or much of anything. The second visit I chose a tuna steak sandwich, which was decent but lacked any type of side dish besides some stale tortilla chips. The beer on the other hand is very good. The stout, brown, pilsner, pale ale, and red were all sampled and all were decent light to mid bodied beers. The Pilsner was the best i have had in a long time with a great spicy hop flavor. Not for the hophead and perhaps a little mainstream but still drinkable and worthy of repeat visits. Rounding out the experience was a fantastic waitress who was very attentive and knowledgeable about beer.