Thursday, April 26, 2012

Vote NXNW for Best Brewpub in America!

Chow, an online foodie magazine, is having a sort of April Madness Contest, if you will, pitting 16 brewpubs from around the Brewnited States in head-to-head matchups until a champion is crowned. And Austin is in the running: North by Northwest, one of my favorite hangouts, successfully advanced in the first round past Minneapolis' Town Hall, and now in the Elite Eight they currently have a solid 58% lead over Taos' Eske's. But they won't keep it unless you vote. Go here to cast your ballot, and perhaps vote for some others if you're familiar with them.

The playoffs have had some shocking upsets in the first round. Eske's made it past Denver's famed Wynkoop, and San Diego's Pizza Port, which I've heard great things about, also narrowly lost.

(Now, I'll be a little bit of a skeptic and question whether this is really a good way to determine best brewpub. It was obviously designed to give geographic representation across the nation, and doesn't acknowledge that there is a huge concentration of great brewpubs in the Pacific Northwest and California. To make an analogy with my favorite sport, track & field, the only reason the long-distance races in the Olympics aren't 100% Kenyan and Ethiopian is that each nation is restricted to three entries each. If Chow really wanted an elite field, about half of these entries would have been from Portland alone. And as one of the commenters on that page noted, where in the heck is northern California's Russian River? That said, I nonetheless love NXNW and think it's deserving of your vote.)

No comments: