Two guys, a girl and some beer: BRÖEDERS Beer Night at NOLA

Pulled pork sandwiches, Southern-style fried chicken, honey mustard sauce, coleslaw, potato salad, home brewed artisan beer, IPA, Golden Ale, Porter, Scottish Ale, if a few years ago someone was to tell me I’d be able to find this food in Buenos Aires, I would call insanity. But times are-a-changing, the porteño gastronomical scene is growing, improving, modernizing and evolving into a city with much more culinary variety than just beef and Malbec. Enter exhibit A –> BRÖEDERS Beer Night every Wednesday Thursday at the closed door restaurant NOLA.

Beer and Southern cooking — what a wondrous combination. Bröder, which means brother in Swedish (but was actually named after the way you’d say ‘brother‘ with a mega-Argie accent), is the creation of brothers and beer enthusiasts Marcelo and Francisco Terren. Marcelo, an industrial designer and biznass man, Francisco, an animator/wineman other half at NOLA, transformed a tiny rooftop terrace shed in their mom’s Palermo loft into their own brewery. With a handful of different types of artisan beers paired with NOLAchef’s homestyle Southern food, makes BROEDERS a banging pop up-puerta cerrada beer night hybrid.

NOLA, the popular Palermo puerta cerrada that opened in June 2012 as one of the first BA restaurants to offer Creole and Cajun cuisine, has now made a weekly tangent from the four course-wine pairing tasting menu with this homey, relaxed beerfoodfun fest.

Run by New Orleans native Liza Puglia (hence NOLA = New Orleans, Louisiana), Liza has been gastro-slutting around Buenos Aires, cooking up a storm of Mexican, French, Southern and all in between fusion.

The night started off with some jalapeño deviled eggs, aka white trash eggs. Along with the trash yolks, there were chili and lime salted peanuts and garlic roasted peanuts that were all paired with a Golden Ale.

Blonde me up, Golden Ale — a light citrus zest ideal for sweaty BA humidity, this first beer reminded me of a Goose Island Blonde from one of my favorite Chicago breweries, Goose Island Brewing Co.

After we opened our throats guzzling down the first beer, we sat down to begin beering it up. The tables are pretty damn cool decked out in Louisiana gear with French Market coffee cans, mason jars as water glasses and Louisiana Gold hot sauce — all ontop a newspaper-lined table, just as they do in the deepdirty during crawfish boils. There is one big table for the traditional closed door restaurant communal dining option, ideal for large parties, the ultra social or the super lonely. For those not into the communal dining thaang, there are also lone tables for the anti-socials (ahem, me).

Let’s move on to the first course, charred sweetbreads on top of a fresh corn and plum salad with pickled onions. Sweetbreads are tricky and a ballsy thing to serve, generally I only order it at certain parrillas (like one or two), drenched lemon juice and insanely crispy outside with a creamy middle. These sweetbreads were cooked just fine — not so much my favorite on its own, but the flavors completely brightened when I took a bite with the perfect pickled onion. Oh, and this was paired with a Scottish Ale, another hit that made me want to put on a kilt and play some bagpipes.

Next came a pint of IPA (Indian Pale Ale) – hellz to the yes, beertopia! From the chickeny smells coming from the kitchen, it was obvious what was up next to pair it: FRIED CHICKEN.

Fried chicken isn’t an easy thing to make, but these two HUGE pieces (breast and drumstick) had a juicy middle and crispy skin — perhaps some parts were crispier than others, and I imagine once it got to the table it probably sogged out a bit, but alas, still quite bomb. It was served alongside potato salad, a little crunchy and undercooked, but the flavors still on point.

The chicken was served with a honey mustard dipping sauce that I’d kinda like to dip into and bathe in… Like bottle this jam up and put it on everything. Yo NOLA, would you draw me a honey mustard bath, please?

Desserts are never my favorite part of the meal, but this dessert was in-jodiendo-creible. A perfect small portion of a dark chocolate Porter mousse, served with a coffee creamed and toasted almonds. They paired it with Broeder’s FAB Porter beer and actually used the Porter in the mousse. BAM.

For those who are looking for a dulce de leche sweetbomb cavity mouthful, this isn’t for you, instead, it’s a perfect rich dessert for savory eaters. It was so good that my eating partner wanted to invent a special squeegee-like utensil to lick up the crevices. Pick up the finger.

The menu changes frequently, always Southern inspired and paired with the BROEDERS beers, with dishes like spicy chicken wings and pulled pork sandwiches on homemade badass buns with coleslaw. Get me some of dat. (Photo above by NOLAchef)

Word on the street is that come springtime, they will be opening their rooftop, roasting whole pigs on the parrilla. Oink.

Talking beer for a hot second, while I’m no beer connoisseur, I have drankdrunkdrunken my fair share of the glorious man nectar. I have also drankdrunkdrunken my fair share of bullshit piss juice. (So clearly I’m qualified to speak on the subject). Each of the types we tried, Golden Ale, Scottish Ale, IPA and Porter were quite delicious, and despite this being the first year the broeders have made beer, it sure didn’t taste like amateur hour. Total beer-making pros.

All three courses, three pints of four different types of beer come to 200 pesos for the whole bang — which considering that 3 pints of good beer at a bar would cost at least 30 pesos each, quite a good closed door bargain. And with big portions, I couldn’t even finish all the food+beer served. The horror.

Two guys, four cups, NOLAchef and some killer Southern cookin’, now that’s a pop-up restaurant I can get into.

BRÖEDERS Beer Night with NOLA 
Wednesday Thursday Night Pop Up, Palermo Viejo (Address given when you make the reserva)
Reservas: BROEDERSartesanal@gmail.com
Broeders on Facebook, Twitter
Price per person: 200 pesos

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