Here's another good entry from the Ponderay brewery. Rocket Dog Rye IPA has the creaminess of their Team SpoCOOL favorite, Cream Ale, and the hoppiness of a good IPA. It's a great combination, and one that makes for a good summer drink.
It pours a fairly cloudy orange color with a a thick creamy head. Quite a bit of lacing. The nose is fruity and hoppy; very refreshing.
The creaminess carries over to the mouthfeel. This is a very smooth beer, with nice fruit-like hoppy flavors and pale malts. The one issue I have is that I can't really taste the rye. It's there, sort of, but very much hidden away.
So it's a good beer, and one that is very drinkable over the next couple of months. I do think the "rye" label is a bit misleading, though, and that could be a disappointment to some.
We like their bistro; we like their grocery store.
Cassano is the type of international market we need to see more of in this town. Here you can find everything from an Italian deli to regular staples. A good mix of "international" and ordinary. Think El Mercado Del Pueblo or De Leon, just Italian.
And really, if you're looking for good pasta and sauces, this is a great place to go. Their gnocchi, for example, has a really nice flavor to it. Grab a bag from the freezer as well as some of their meat sauce and you have a five minute meal that's very tasty. Heck, get their meatballs too. They're excellent.
In some sense, I guess, these type of meals are the fastfood of the past. They take a bit more work than driving through McDonald's -- we're talking five minutes -- but assembling a quick pasta dish with Cassano ingredients is obviously a million times better tasting. (You might not agree, which would be kind of sad.)
Anyway. Cassano carries pretty much everything you'd expect from a convenience store, plus a bunch of frozen and fresh Italian style groceries. The deli also has fresh sandwiches and other deli-style foods.
Things are, apparently, happening. And if you followed us on Twitter you'd already know that Spokane has Italy fever!
First, Italia Trattoria has opened! Former Luna chef Anna Vogel is helming the Italian restaurant in the former Marron building. The word "authentic" has been thrown around, which certainly is a good thing, though we will wait and see for ourselves. Spokane doesn't have a history of much in terms of Italian authenticity.
Speaking of faux-Italian that goes better with our Olive Garden past, Ciao Mambo is opening in the Lincoln Plaza building downtown. You'll likely be pretty pleased if you've been looking for a new spot to hate. With a slogan like "Where even the pasta is sexy!" and "Italian Nachos" are proudly displayed as a signature dish... Well... Lord help us all... Look at the image above... Is that Italian and sexy? Is that what we've come to? Seriously.
But hey, they can always prove me wrong. There's a first for everything!
It seems like someone should have thought of this before. Mixing coconut and porter? Something like that simply has to work. It's in the law of nature! (Look it up.)
It pours dark -- shocking, I know -- with about a finger worth of thick head. The lacing retains pretty well. This is a nice aromatic beer: Chocolates and possibly coffee meet your nose straight from the pour.
The surprise, to me at least, came in the flavor. It might be the coconut that gives off strong hints of smokiness, but really, I hadn't expected it. Not that it sits heavy or anything -- there's more of a creamy chocolate flavor to it -- but it's definitely there. There's a mild hoppy flavor at the end of the flavor too.
This might not be the most crazy complex porter out there, but as far as a refreshing porter, I can't think of many that would compete with the CoCoNut Porter. Seeing how it's really quite warm outside, I'd say that's a good thing.
