Firehouse Grill and Brewery - E Palo Alto

No Longer In Business

A decent place, a good place to come watch some sports. TV’s all over the place. I didn’t eat but the food looked good and happy hour prices were reasonable. The beer was decent. They had 5 house beers and 5 guest beers (only 2 craft).

Visited December 29, 2013.

First stop of the day, getting a sampler bright and early. I’ve been meaning to stop in here for years now. I first noticed the place in 2006 or so but just never had a reason to go to EPA, even if it’s right off the freeway. Then for some reason I thought it disappeared but I guess that’s not true, at least according to the bartender who says they’ve been open continuously since 2005. She also says that they’re thinking about shutting down that location and moving to Campbell, so look out bytemesis, your favorite brewery might be in your back yard.

The place was kind of sad on a Sunday morning with only a handful of other customers in the place. I didn’t actually order a sampler since they have the same basic house beers that they have in Mountain View. The one difference was the pumpkin ale which I got a glass of. It was very lightly spiced, so lightly in fact that if I wasn’t paying attention and I didn’t know it was a pumpkin beer I might have just assumed that it was a phenolic amber ale. The server was very nice and helpful, though she really didn’t know much about the beer. I usually don’t pick the brains of the employees since more often than not they really don’t know much about the beer they’re serving. All I really wanted to know was the abv of the pumpkin beer so I could add it, but instead I got a story about how all beers are about 4% abv. The other server proceded to read her the abv’s of the other house beers (which were all in the 5 to 8% range) but sadly the pumpkin beer was not listed. Oh well.

I didn’t try the food but the guy next to me at the bar ordered breakfast and it looked good. I guess they get busy during the lunch rush with all the Stanford people coming over the freeway. Beyond that they’re kind of slow and will likely be moving. I can’t speak to the prices on the other stuff but my pint was $4 plus tax. Not bad. If they do some kind of beer week event with a lot of house beers on I might stop back in but otherwise I’ll probably scroll past.

Same deal as the Sunnyvale location but Ikea is next door which is a plus.

Newly opened second venue for Firehouse in the bay area. Ambiance is nice, pretty standard brewpub. Taplist includes several of their own beers plus a pedestrian list of others. Their beers (at least the two I sampled) are actually pretty decent however. Food was good, not great. Service was pretty good; and, umm, well presented. All in all not a place to go looking for, but you could do worse if you ended up here.