Time to get off my butt and start doing some posts on our wonderful trip to Florida earlier this spring. I’m hoping to get to at least one post a week from the FL trip along with some of the local stuff I have been posting lately.

You may know this but the one thing I’m pretty adamant about on our beer travels is that we avoid fast food at all costs. Sometimes that’s unavoidable, especially when we hit the road later in the day and we need something at 3AM but for the most part I do my best to find great local food and beer to partake in instead of the usual Golden Arches. When I think of it ahead of time, I usually plan out where we’ll hit around meal time and find a place not too far off the highway through BeerAdvocate or TVFoodMaps, the latter of which has a pretty handy mobile app. We love Stillwater Artisanal in the Capital Region (thanks Remarkable Liquids!), so we decided to eat a late dinner in Baltimore at Of Love & Regret, a pub stemming from the mastermind of Stillwater Artisanal’s Brian Strumke.

Given we were on the road, I only had small pours of a few beers that are not so easy to come by, especially on tap around the Capital Region. I started off dinner with a Midgal Bavel, a spicey saison featuring Myrrh and Szechuan with some big citrus notes and an herbal character. This was followed up with Premium, a super crushable pilsner malt base with farmhouse yeast and a healthy dose of Brett. This was destined for cans as of the end of last year but I’m not sure if that ever happened. If so, this would be in stock in my fridge on the reg.

Stillwater Premium

Kopstootje, meant to be paired with Bols Genever, was the final beer of the night. The Bols Genever is presented in a small tulip shot glass and filled to the brim forming a meniscus. Drinkers put their hands behind their back and slurp from the tulip follwed by taking a swing of the a jenever flavored saison Kopsteeotje (a “little head butt” in Dutch). I only partook in the beer, but the presentation for the beer and shot was very enticing.

As for the food, for the most part it was very good. We started the meal with some rock shrimp covered in a spicy mayo and topped with a pinapple salsa. This has been a go to starter for Elise and I for a while now and this did not disappoint.

There were plenty of dinner options that piqued my interests that night but in keeping in mind we had another 13 hours of driving to go I stuck with the burger and sandwich menu. The roast rib-eye french dip was presented on a thick cut sourdough bread with cheddar cheese, a horseradish red onion marmalade, and a mushroom jus on the side for dipping.

Sadly Elise wasn’t a huge fan of her crabcake, a crying shame since we were in the state most famous for their crab cake. It was served with caper-peppadew remoulade on a bed of roasted brussels sprouts which I gladly stole from her plate.

Overall though the experience was really good, the bartenders were friendly and gave us a lot of great tips not only for recommendations on beers but also for other places to stop on our trip. Fans of Stillwater Artisanal should definitely check Of Love & Regret out.
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Of Love & Regret (link) | 1028 South Conkling Street Baltimore, MD (map) | All Of Love & Regret Posts | All Stillwater Artisanal Posts