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Take a page out of the founding fathers’ book and enjoy these three spots offering unique menu items paired with your favorite craft beers.
John Park
Art of the Pub. Roanoke’s handful of brewpubs prove that the old-fashioned reimagined is often the highest kind of style.
At a time when Roanoke’s craft brew scene appeared to be reaching its zenith, the brewpub came to town. This old-fashioned idea has been reimagined 21st Century-style and is injecting a new and fun energy to the area’s local restaurant vibe. This Octoberfest, Roanokers have not only the myriad of local tap rooms available to them, but now have several options for celebrating brewpub-style as well.
John Park
Twisted Track Brewpub beer and Boattrain Ahi Tuna Wonton Tacos
Twisted Track
William Landry always knew craft brews and food were made to be together. Shortly after moving to Roanoke in 2005, the accountant-by-trade began home brewing and designing dozens of concept models for a brewpub-styled business.
“It just makes sense,” says Landry of the brewpub model. “It’s hundreds of years old. It pre-dates our country. It’s where our founding fathers met together.”
However old-fashioned the brewpub concept is, for Southwest Virginia, Landry was ahead of his time. Failing to win approval for his brewpub design, Landry tucked his dream away, but never abandoned it. In 2013, he became one of the founding brewers for Chaos Mountain Brewery.
After several years brewing at Chaos Mountain, Landry was ready to give his brewpub concept a second try. With over a decade of rapid brewery and restaurant growth in Roanoke, Landry found a warmer reception for his design. He met three other like-minded individuals: Rudy Lyon, John Hines and Toby Hagedorn.
Together they gained the approval needed and snagged the location occupied at the time by Soaring Ridge Brewery. Through connections at Chaos Mountain, Landry pulled in executive chef Amanda Ulrich to run the restaurant side of the brewpub. The team worked through much of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Then they took a leap of faith and opened Twisted Track in November 2020.
“That was really humbling,” says Landry of the sheer success of their opening. Twisted Track has been going strong ever since.
The Twisted Track owners have given Ulrich close to carte blanche in designing both the regular menu and the specials. Ulrich says she loves the challenge of creating foods to pair with Twisted Track’s craft brews.
Her excitement shows. Twisted Track’s menu is a happy selection of upscale pub foods to satisfy a wide range of expectations and appetites. There are certainly those traditional brewpub items like their homemade giant pretzel, bone in or boneless wings and traditional styled burgers.
But there are also pops of a little bit different, like the ahi tuna wonton tacos, a Mediterranean power bowl – my personal favorite – and chicken and waffles. No matter the food, traditional or pop, Ulrich imagines and creates every item with a culinary twist, staying true to the brewpub’s name and to her own unique vision of how good beer and good food should go together.
Twisted Track
523 Shenandoah Ave NW
Roanoke VA 24016
540-339-9776
See website for latest on hours
John Park
Three Notch'd menu sampling with their watermelon gose.
Three Notch’d
When Virginia’s largest independent craft brewery, Three Notch’d Brewing Company, was considering Roanoke to add to their small but growing fleet of Virginia brew locations, they knew instantly they would make it a brewpub. The Charlottesville-based craft brewery made a commitment from their inception to remain local to Virginia. They currently have four locations (at the time of this writing, a fifth is scheduled to open in late 2021). Of these, Charlottesville is where the brewery began and Roanoke, serve full menus.
“Roanoke’s downtown is gorgeous,” says Emily Laney, general manager for the Three Notch’d Roanoke location. “There is also a great network of [craft brew] folks in Roanoke. The craft brew culture here is very solid.”
Three Notch’d Craft Kitchen and Brewery opened its doors downtown on Roanoke’s Market Square in October 2018. Laney says of all their locations, Roanoke’s is most similar to their flagship Charlottesville location, but with the unique personality of Roanokers in mind. As much as possible, Three Notch’d utilizes local sources for their foods, beginning with what they can source directly from downtown market vendors, then moving out from there.
Roanoke’s Three Notch’d location is also heavily focused on offering great food and brew pairings for groups of guests. They aim to be the place where friends can gather over a great beer, burgers and appetizers. With their focus always on the “beer that got them here,” Three Notch’d chefs constantly work to incorporate Three Notch’d brews as ingredients in their foods.
Their 40 Mile IPA makes up the main ingredient in the cheese sauce served with their pretzel bites and drizzled over their 40 Mile Philly. Similarly, their Minute Man IPA is used for making pickles, and their Hydraulion Red is part of their mustard recipe. When the brewery releases a new brew, local chefs will create a weekend special that highlights its flavors.
Everything I’ve eaten at Three Notch’d has been delicious. Their pineapple express burger is an excellent layering and melding of flavor profiles, as is their High on the Hog. The Brussel Caesar is an imaginative twist on Brussel sprouts. Their pretzel bites and parmesan garlic TOTS are semi-addictive.
The Three Notch’d motto is “Make Your Mark.” This is what I love most about their presence in the ‘Noke. Their commitment to keep what is local to Roanoke, local: helping us make our own mark.
Three Notch’d
24 Campbell Ave SE
Roanoke, VA 24011
540-492-5005
Hours:
Monday – 11am-6pm
Tuesday – Closed
Wednesday – 11am-8pm
Thursday – 11am-8pm
Friday – 11am-10pm
Saturday – 11am-10pm
Sunday – 11am-6pm
John Park
Twin Creeks Brewing featuring a variety of menu items and beer.
Twin Creeks Brewpub
Like most craft breweries, Twin Creeks Brewpub made its debut from a home garage. Owners Andy Bishop, Jason Bison and Barry Robertson began dabbling in home brewing in the mid-2000s. They started with the home brew kits, then graduated themselves to all-grain brewing and creating their own wort. After some encouragement from friends and family, the three began entering homebrew competitions across Virginia. Of the ten competitions they entered, the trio took first place nine times.
Twin Creeks Brewery opened their downtown Vinton location in 2016. By 2018, the partners were ready to expand.
“We weren’t looking for a second location,” says Bishop of the Twin Creeks Brewpub located inside Explore Park. “Our plan was to expand our brewery location. But the more we looked into it, the more cost prohibitive it became.”
Enter a business luncheon Bishop and his wife were attending at Explore Park hosted by Roanoke County. Someone mentioned the availability of the old Brugh Tavern located there and the County’s desire to see it in operation once again. Bishop’s wife looked at him. Bishop nodded. A year later and just in time for Explore Park’s 2019 Illuminights season, Twin Creeks Brewpub was born.
Bishop says their menu concept for the brewpub is simple: classic pub fare served with generous portions. Their focus is on variations to three main themes: salads, burgers and wings. Chef Keith Schult, whom the owners met during their second time in the Gauntlet, has done a fantastic job designing a menu that is at once comfortable yet sparks with the unexpected.
They offer the usual pub-styled appetizers: nachos, cheesy tater tots and fried pickles, for example. And then for that little something different, there are fried avocados on the menu. Their burger selection is similar with varieties of the expected, like their sunrise burger or pimento cheese burger. The Brugh dilly burger, however, offers diners something new.
And then there are their wings. This is where I think the Twin Creeks Brewpub menu truly shines. It’s all in the sauces. Chef Schult has taken special care to develop unique sauce recipes that sing with delicious and satisfying complexity. I’ve enjoyed the blueberry habanero and sweet Thai chili so far. My next visit will include sampling the mango habanero and garlic parmesan.
All while sitting next to one of their warm and welcoming fire pits, with a well-paired Twin Creeks brew, of course.
Twin Creeks Brewpub at Explore Park
1 Old Salem Turnpike Rd
Roanoke, VA 24014
540-566-4863
Hours:
Friday – 5:30pm-9pm
Saturday – 1pm-9pm
Sunday – 1pm-7pm
The story above is from our September/October 2021. For more stories, subscribe today or view our FREE digital edition. Thank you for supporting local journalism!