M&S Taps

It's probably been since right after the M&S Grill opened on the Plaza since I've been there. We had reservations at Starker's in an hour and a half and had some time to kill which coincided with happy hour. We wanted to be near Starker's so we could get there right on time, but have plenty of time for happy hour. I had remembered that the M&S Grill had a good happy hour and was just around the corner from Starker's so we gave it a shot.

$3.75 draft beers, $5 glasses of wine, $6 cocktails and a pretty good food menu. I think it was the food menu I remembered as being the good part of the happy hour. Since we were going to Starker's last night was going to be a wine night so I got a $5 glass of cabernet. But, after I ordered, I noticed that they had 12 taps and a great variety of beers. Unlike Maloney's, which I complained about a couple of weeks ago and laid out this rule of thumb "For any bar with over 6 tap handles, more than 50% should not be macro beers", M&S Grill carried just Miller Lite and Coors Lite on tap. They also had Blue Moon, the Blue Moon seasonal, Guinness and Stella Artois. So if you want to be really picky, you can say that M&S has 50% macro beers, but I don't really count Blue Moon as macro, Guinness is in the same category and, damn it, I like a Stella every now and again, so by my count it's only 17%. The rest of the taps were Boulevard, Sam Adams, Lagunitas IPA and the all important Tank 7.

You can hate on a chain restaurant all you want, but, when they're doing something right it should be pointed out. This is far from a super impressive tap list, but it does show they care about the clientele they want. They don't want the cheap, crappy beer drinker, they want us. They care about what they're serving enough to serve good beers (and kitchen prepared fresh food). So kudos to M&S Grill for getting it right in the Plaza which doesn't have much selection of good beer, Granfalloon notwithstanding.