Taylor’s Crossing Restaurant & Brewery

No Longer In Business

Quite classic American brewpub, reasonably cosy; the selection is neither huge nor exciting, but still acceptable. Know that they also work a "brewery", in the sense that some of the beers listed at Taylor’s are not available at the brewpub but only sold elsewhere.

Taylor’s Crossing has about as much atmosphere as a new shopping mall. No problems with service. The Witbier was decent, with about another 6 beers on tap. Wednesday was a good day to go: Wok Wednesday! All stir-fry items were $8.99. A great price for a decent meal.

Started out my day in Vancouver here. Has a kind of dark British Pub chain feel that I can see becoming a trend in the rest of the Mark James Group pubs I visit today. Great friendly service, a really fun waiter and decent food, but the beer sucks though. A great server in Dave, comped my taster tray.

Quite a hike from the seabus left us with quite the appetite. Service was cheerful and engaging and although it’s nice to get a selection of the pretty young waitresses, a turn-over of four different servers in about three hours is rather bizarre. Selection of inhouse beers that were all quite decent with nothing standing out either to the good or the bad. Food was honest and well-made but again not spectacular. The bar itself is quite large with a bunker-like patio out back.

Nothing special here either in the way of beer or food except an odd seasonal.The service has been adequate any time I have been there. The new Firkin Fridays are great!!

The bar area is cozy, with lots of wood. Beams and a central staircase break up the space a bit. Evidently the upstairs section will be open at some point. The bar is where I stayed on my visit. It has all the typical accoutrements of any Canadian bar - pool table, TVs and a very sterile bar area with rows of international-brand liquors in full view. I find the liquors and sterility of it all to really detract from the atmosphere - you can’t feel warm in with the ubiquitous giant shrine to megacorporate boozemakers taking up so much of your space. Servicewise, I thought the first guy was okay, but then he left and a girl came in who spent all her time talking to some friends and the service suffered for it. For food, I had a bowl of curry soup. The chef got cute and did something that didn’t make sense to me. There was the sour cream drizzled on it. They took it back and replaced it but sour cream on a curry soup is a ghastly notion. A Russian soup, sure, but curry? Culturally and culinarily inappropriate. The beer isn’t bad, but nothing really stood out. The lager was the best - all Mark James lagers are good, as they get a nice 6-8 weeks of lagering. Some of the ales were timid, and the pale on nitrogen is inappropriate as nitro kills hop flavour more than anything else. And that’s if you like nitrogen, which I don’t.

Like many of the Mark James Brewpubs. I’m not really sure why they changed the name from Avalon to this. Nice big interior, decent music, not too loud. Slightly yuppyish crowd. Decent (if somewhat overpriced) food. The beers are pretty solid, but I’d like to see some seasonals introduced. Maybe that will happen in time. Not a bad spot though.