Sarah Lemon / Mail Tribune House-made meatless burgers are available at Medford’s Bricktowne Brewing Company.
Sarah Lemon / Mail Tribune A small house salad is a side dish choice with Bricktowne’s burgers and sandwiches, including pulled pork (pictured).
Sarah Lemon / Mail Tribune House-made sweet potato fries are a side dish option with Bricktowne’s burgers and sandwiches, including the “dirty bird” (pictured).
Sarah Lemon / Mail Tribune A half-pint of Bricktowne Brown Ale complements an appetizer of pretzel “bites.”
Sarah Lemon / Mail Tribune House-made cheese sauce accents an appetizer of pretzel “bites” at Bricktowne Brewing Company in Medford.
Sarah Lemon / Mail Tribune Outdoor seating is available at the Bricktowne Brewing Company location at the corner of Central Avenue and Eighth Street in downtown Medford.
Medford’s downtown brewery has new owners since the pandemic closed
Since reopening in October, Bricktowne Brewing Company has steadily wooed customers to its downtown Medford location with new dishes, specials and live entertainment.
The business founded more than a decade ago by Craig McPheeters has new owners and a renewed outlook since pandemic concerns precipitated its closure for several months last year. Bricktowne, which is introducing a new menu this spring, entices diners with a different promotion almost every day of the week.
Mondays have an all-day “happy hour,” Tuesdays with discounted pasta bowls, and Wednesdays they cut pizza prices. Thursdays combine comedy, trivia and $5 kids’ meals, while Sundays are soup and salad specials. On Saturdays they even bring live music to the corner of Central Avenue and Eighth Street.
A street corner sandwich board caught my eye enough times that I decided to invite a couple of co-workers to Bricktowne for lunch. The site is within walking distance of downtown offices and entertainment venues, conveniently across the street from the Craterian. In addition to the critical mass of multi-block brewpubs and taverns, Bricktowne is an obvious choice for a Medford pub crawl.
That plan would have to wait for a weekend. For our weekday visit, my friends and I requested one of the umbrella tables located along Bricktowne’s Central Avenue frontage. The single server was busy with several other tables inside, but brought us a pitcher of water for the warm day.
My friends ordered an iced tea and soda while I ordered a half pint of Workin’ Gal Brown from Bricktowne. There are about 10 house-brewed beers, from Blue Collar Blonde Ale to Whiskey Canyon Porter, for $7 a pint.
Guest taps host Applegate’s Apple Outlaw Cider and beers from Portland’s Breakside and Ecliptic. Wines on tap include sauvignon blanc, cabernet and pinot noir. There are even three selections from Medford’s Steamworks Meadery that I vowed to try next time. A cocktail menu details 20 specialty drinks ranging from $8 to $13.
For evening pub crawls, appetizers and shareable appetizers are my favorite beer pairings. But I could hardly think of chicken wings, pork nachos or bacon and cheese to fit just me.
And we needed a much larger batch for Bricktowne’s “party pretzel,” tipping the scales at a pound and a half for $25. So my friends and I settled on an order of pretzel “bites” ($8) with homemade cheese dip.
From the sandwich menu, I was surprisingly drawn to the “dirty bird” ($16), which features a fried chicken breast, bacon, swiss, aioli and homemade honey mustard sauce. Bacon was also part of my friend’s burger, but not for her consumption. Requesting Bricktowne’s house-made veggie patty on her “Volcano Burger” ($16), Julia specified bacon on the side to take home for her dog. Restaurants never charge less than the base price of a burger to omit the bacon, he explained.
Our burgers came with a selection of sides, with the sweet potato fries proving more appealing than the fries and tots. Nick selected the house salad to go with his BBQ Pork Sandwich ($13). Upgrade to Caesar salad costs an additional $2.
We expected the pretzel bites, listed under the appetizer heading on the menu, to come out first. I craved a bite as I drank my beer. But the fried dough spheres arrived after our main courses, carried from the kitchen by a different employee than our server.
While the party pretzel suggested homemade origins, pretzel “bites” were packaged pretzel bites that have become quite widespread in grocery stores and Costco. The beer-battered cheese sauce, with its decided flavor and pleasant texture, enlivened an appetizer that needed pairing with at least another pint of beer to earn my affection.
The battered house sweet potato fries went best with the cheese dip to my taste buds, though I also liked the ranch dressing and the fry sauce. Without too much sauce, my chicken sandwich held up under the weight of a thicker piece of chicken than it needed and well done bacon. The richness of my sandwich almost made us wish we had ordered the “Volcano Burger” for its grilled pineapple, jalapeño, pepper jack cheese, and pineapple-havanero sauce.
Julia liked the burger, who also praised the meatless patty, which was better than many others she had tried. Along with chopped romaine lettuce, tomatoes and red onions, coleslaw and pickled onions freshened up Nick’s pulled pork sandwich.
Salad lovers can also choose between the Antipasti Salad ($12), loaded with salami, pepperoni, black olives, red onion and pepperoncini, and the Buffalo Chicken Salad ($13), its key ingredients they were echoed in the crispy Buffalo chicken sandwich ($16), which I would have ordered if the kitchen hadn’t run out of gorgonzola crumbles.
Another iteration of Buffalo chicken headlines Bricktowne’s pasta bowl section, with five and incorporating flavors from Cajun to Mediterranean for $13 to $18. Five pizza recipes complement an $18-$20 build-your-own option.
Located at 44 S. Central Ave., Bricktowne Brewing Company is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Call 541-973-2377, check bricktownebrewing.com and check facebook.com/solocalbrews for updates.
Contact Features Editor Sarah Lemon at 541-776-4494 or slemon@rosebudmedia.com
