After a two-day trial run over the weekend to give its taps a test drive, the beer-centric Old Town Pour House officially opens today in Gaithersburg’s Downtown Crown after a two-day trial run over the weekend.
This is the third location for Chicago-based restaurant group Bottleneck Management, and its first outside the Chicago area.
“The guys were looking at the D.C. area and it just so happened that this Gaithersburg opportunity came across their desk,” said Angela Zoiss, Botteneck Management’s marketing director. “The demographics fit their concept and the Downtown Crown area is certainly growing, with a number of condos and homes popping up around there.”
The company also liked the restaurant landscape, Zoiss said. The Old Town Pour House takes its place near restaurants like Paladar and newcomers to the area Coastal Flats and Asia Nine.
“These are all restaurants that we’re happy to align ourselves with,” Zoiss says, but without being in tight competition with them.
The bar features some 90 beers on tap. Beers from near (Silver Spring’s Denizens Brewing Co., and Frederick’s Flying Dog among them) and far (like Chimay from Belgium and Guinness from Ireland, for starters) give patrons plenty to consider. On Saturdays and Sundays, it also serves up 20-ounce goblets of its Churchill bloody Mary, with a Slim Jim swizzle stick and a filet mignon medallion on a skewer.
Its menu includes pretzel bits dipped in Lagunitas IPA-flavored cheese sauce, cheese curds, crab cakes (for the Maryland-minded) and Chicago dogs (for the Windy City devotee).
If it sounds like bar food, Zoiss said, it’s good bar food.
“We wanted to combine a really great bar and a really great craft beer list with a really great restaurant,” she said. “If you want to go out and have a vibrant, upbeat environment, if you want to go out and grab a beer, we don’t think that should be exclusive from being able to eat really well at the same time.”
The restaurant includes 260 seats inside, 90 seats on the patio in warmer weather, and come game time, three 110-inch “video walls.”
