Since the first part of our honeymoon was absolutely packed with food thanks to the Disney Dining Plan (read my Disney restaurant reviews here – lots more to come!), we decided the second part of our honeymoon in upstate NY didn’t need quite so much food including! As we hopped on the plane to fly north, we were excited about the prospect of getting back into the kitchen and spending time cooking meals together rather than needing to get all fancied up for restaurants and eat ALL the food for another week.
See more of our Lake Placid, NY honeymoon posts here:
We did, however, have a list of several good looking restaurants in and around Lake Placid that we decided to pick two from for evening meals. The first one we actually chose wasn’t the Big Slide Brewery, but the Lake Placid Brewery, which was right at the bottom of the hill from our resort, Lake Placid Club Lodges, in walking distance. We were looking at reviews just before we left though and spotted the Big Slide Brewery whose menu appealed to us more, so a last minute decision was made, and we hopped in the car to drive a couple of minutes out of town to this brewery located near the Olympic Jumping Complex – post on this to come soon as we visited later in the week!
The Big Slide Public House & Brewery has only been open since June 2016 but appears to have gained an excellent reputation in that short space of time. As a brewery, it’s known as the home of the Giant IPA but has ten beers on tap at any time – you can see the seasonal selection of these here. You can get a sampler of 5 or 10 of the beers, or you can request a “brewer’s pour” – a 6.6oz measure of a beer of your choice to try. The restaurant has a barrel/brew house right in the centre as you enter and a wall of wooden barrels behind the bar with various types of barrel including fresh oak, bourbon and red wine to age their brews. Since Ben’s a huge beer fan, particularly IPAs, this sounded ideal for him. He ended up choosing their signature Giant IPA and their Big Slide IPA which were apparently both excellent, and were served in these fun unusual glasses! See the best places to buy beer online here.
In terms of food, they pride themselves on farm-to-table locally sourced ingredients and the “freshest food in the area”. The menu appears to be changed seasonally, and they also have a fantastic selection of appetizers and bar snacks to tide you over while you sip your beer. We saw one table order and receive a HUGE plate of poutine – it looked fantastic, but they could barely manage it between the 4 of them, so I’m glad we hadn’t ordered it! Excellent value for the amount they got though! The chef likes to experiment with fun local ingredients and flavours, and the naming of the dishes also kept us amused…read on!
I had the “What a Fun-Gi” brick oven pizza as my main, handmade and woodfired in their own on site 700 degree brick oven. This was a white based pizza topped with assorted mushrooms and a balsamic reduction glaze, and was absolutely amazing. I couldn’t recommend it more! The base was thin but still had a good bite and chew to it, with an excellent flavour – I often find pizza bases to lack in flavour a little, meaning I leave the crust behind a lot, but I happily ate my way through the whole thing and could have even eaten the base as a bread without the toppings if need be, it was that good! The combo of cheeses and various mushrooms with a sharp balsamic on the top also worked wonderfully. Seriously, I’m still thinking about this pizza now.
Ben’s choice of main was “A Respectable Attempt at a Good Chicken Sandwich” – a name that had us very amused! And we can say, hand on heart, that it was definitely more than a “respectable attempt” at a good chicken sandwich – I think Ben may have uttered the words that it was the best chicken sandwich he’s had! The chicken breast was perfectly seasoned, with a hint of spice and still very juicy inside, topped with thick cut bacon and a tasty mayo and served with seasoned fries – we have a lot of love for proper American seasoned fries as it’s seemingly something we don’t do quite as well over here, and we (of course I had some!) were very pleased with these ones.
The atmosphere of the pub and brewery as a whole was excellent, with friendly and knowledgeable serving staff – Ben asked for recommendations for his beers and they were spot on. There were a few other tables seated to eat at the same time as us, and a number of people around the bar having a mid-week beer and chatting, meaning it had a buzz but didn’t feel overly busy. It was a relaxed and super tasty meal. My only complaint? We didn’t go back again!
