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Suburban Bar Review: The Sterling Pig Brewery In Media, PA

So this is a 'testing the waters' kind of segment here on my blog.  I went out last night with one of the profs from work kind of, as a "we finally just decided to actually do it because we'd been joking about it for so long every time he stopped by the door to the tech room office that we finally actually went to check it out".  This blog post was actually his idea.  He was like, "Kenny, you should write a review of the bars that you go to write at, you can be the Suburban Bar Review Guy".  I'm pretty sure there's probably a bar review guy out there already, or maybe several of them.  But I'm pretty sure that there already being bars in Media didn't stop the owners of the Sterling Pig Brewery from opening another one.  Ya know what I means?  So I'm at least going to write one post.  Maybe I'll write a post about other bars.  Or maybe I'll review more than just bars, could be restaurants, or maybe even coffee shops, or maybe... Friends' houses and apartments?  That might be kind of weird.  I don't know why anyone would read a review on some random blog about his friend's house or apartment...

But hey, there's a market for almost anything these days!

Sorry I'm doing that digressing thing, or I think it's just... I digress.  Or if Apple had their way...

iDigress.

Well there I am just hanging out having a brew and a burger with the prof chatting about life and work and me being single and how he would have brought his wife along but she was out with her friends and anything else under the sun that came up in conversation and we started critiquing the bar, because, well, we work at a college and he's a professor and he's good at critiquing students' papers and I'm good at looking around trying to pick out things to critique.  Soon enough one or two word led to another in conversation and here we are.

Now, I'm not a city guy.  Sure, I'll go downtown every so often, but I prefer the small towns around cities.  I LOVE main streets.  Cute little main street towns are my jam.  So maybe this is more of a small towns around cities bar guy review than a suburbs, but hey who's counting right?  Or critiquing I guess?

The Stirling Pig was packed.  We're talking PACKED.  If it were a Sardine can, those Sardines would fit right in and be at home with their bad selves.  Now the first thing that EVERYONE seemed to bring up in conversation and that we even brought up as I was walking up to the place to meet him, was that... there's no immediate parking.  This is probably one of my gripes with city life, parking is a pain in the bum.  I know, I know, they are bad for the environment or something, but I love parking lots.  I just love em.  I love being able to pull right in and not have to read a seventeen page instruction manual on how to use the street or parking garage meter.  I love not having to drive around the block eighty eight times and then shouting out "OH OH THERE'S A SPOT!!!".  And then I floor the gas pedal and race three other would be parkers to the spot, only to find it's not really a spot but a "Do not park here by order of some really high powered government official or you WILL not be towed... Instead your car WILL be demolished on the spot".

I love parking lots.  I love BIG, OPEN, parking lots.  You get it.

Well at the pig brewery sadly, this isn't the case.  However it did not deter me.  Given that Media is a quaint little main street town I was able to park just down the street at a meter (and there were TONS of open meters) and I didn't have to feed the meter because it ended at 6 as all meters should.  Cities?  Get on that.  Why must your meters go till midnight and start again at 2 am?  That's... as they say in the business, no bueno.  I have no idea what business they say that in, but I'm sure they say it in some business some where.

iDigress 2.  Now available in five flashy colors!  Sorry, iDigress 2c for the colors.  What happened to the 2s you ask?  I'll check with development and marketing and get back to you on that one.

So walking up to meet my friend at the entrance, there's an upstairs and a downstairs.  It's a bit like my one friend's split level house (but that's a review for another blog post).  The upstairs is quieter and there are tables to dine at with friends or family members, or pets in an ideal world, but not pets because there's no pets allowed.

The downstairs has a loud bar populated with young Media-ites all talking about their relationship successes and failures using interesting euphemisms to describe the failures, or discussing the successes or failures of the sports teams for this here local city.  Or discussing the successes or failures of their tastebuds against the liquid in the glass receptacles they held in their hands.  Most of them had smelly stuff on and goop in their hair and the lady half of the humans standing/leaning/sitting around the large circular bar taking up 90 percent of the room had decorative goop rubbed above their eyes and on their lips and such.  Which I imagine is traditional practice to attain a success as opposed to a failure in the taking someone home for the night back to your apartment scene.  I've never had much success with that.  Perhaps I need more goop in my hair.

There were a few little high tables and chairs near the bar in a small "seat yourself" area downstairs.  As well there's a very large unisex bathroom.  It's like a two car garage in there!  It's crazy big, people.  And the hand dryer is one of those jet engine ones.

We decided to sit upstairs, which we found out the hard way wasn't a seat yourself.  As soon as we sat down one of the servers came over in a very curt and upset tone of voice, he made it clear that we had no followed the rules of how to seat properly in this fine dining and drinking establishment.  We apologized profusely and proceeded to the host station where the girl standing there, a smile on her face and holding back a laugh, told us that we could go sit back down, she didn't know why he told us we couldn't sit there.

We sat there.  The server gave us a stink eye.  Then another guy came over and handed us menus.  Now, let's talk menus for s minute.  My first reaction was where did they get this paper?  I love it.  The texture of the paper really connected with my inner crafting desires.  It's a thick brown fuzz type of paper.  And the printing of the text is made to look vintage.  It almost felt like cut up old paper shopping bags.  I'm pretty sure you can get it at most craft stores.  I might have to pick some up to do something crafty with.

The contents of the menu itself were quite nice.  I tried two of the beers, one was a saison and the other an ale.  The Curly Tail Ale.  I liked it.  Pretty standard stuff.  They had about 6 or 8 beers I believe.  I'll have to head back to try some of the others at some point.

Onward foodward...  The food was pretty delicious, well, I only got a burger.  Actually my one critique was the fries.  I've definitely had better fries.  I'm sorry!  What?  I mean you can't win em all.  They were fries though.  So fries are fries and I can always eat fries no matter what.  But I've been to places that have just done very interesting zesty things with the fries and these were just ordinary no frills fries.  Now the burger on the other hand, that was a champ.  It was grass fed and very scrumptious.  Lettuce and tomato and I believe some kind of sassy sauce hidden under the bun.  The onion was slightly sautéed.

All in all I like the place.  The upstairs bathroom was closed due to technical difficulties...  It's nice to know they have redundant restrooms just in case of such situations.  That's the WORST when a dining establishment only had one bathroom and it's out of order.  I hate that.  Then I've got to sit there all uncomfortable until I can find the next place to relieve myself.  Especially when consuming a diuretic substance that ramps up the flow of fluid from my kidneys, such as an alcoholic beverage.

All in all it's a great place.  I feel like they are really benefiting from the "new kid in town" syndrome though.... It's definitely way off the beaten path, so the only way you would know about it is if you were told my someone else... which I feel like a lot of people are definitely doing given that it was tough to find an open seat last night.  They even had seating outside as well.  I forgot to mention that.  It's still that nice time of the year before it starts to get... well you know... that "W" word that no one wants to talk about.  It rhymes with internet, but without the net part.  Winternet.  I suppose they COULD keep the outside seating year around, but you'd have to be pretty hardcore to sit out there in January.  Or maybe just from Alaska or something.

And there you have it.  My first suburban bar review.  It might be my only.  It might be the first of many.  One can never tell with these things.