Barney’s Beanery - Pasadena

Visited once for a birthday party. The party was fun but the place was kind of lame. Upstairs is a bar with crappy beer. Downstairs is a restaurant with some better beer but it’s nothing special. Some of the basic CA offerings are present. I actually only stuck around an hour and then headed down the street to Lucky Baldwins to see what they had on tap for their Oktoberfest party. Service was hard to get a hold of since it was a busy Saturday night. Prices were a bit high. Didnt eat.

Kind of a cheesy themed type restaurant interior. Beer list isn’t bad, but not amazing either. Haven’t ever eaten here as it’s mostly been a place I’ve stopped when out at night for cocktails. Service is decent, no worse than any bar in a popular area on a weekend night. Most of the beers are common, popular choices, but I guess I can’t fault them considering the location. Not really my favorite place.

This is not a beer bar. this is a theme restaurant chain that has lost all of its authenticity by recreating itself over and over again. cheesy. noisy both visually and in terms of noise. i do not recommend

The place is a converted snooty nightclub/pool hall called Q’s. I like it much better now. Has a really cool looking bar and bench seating, and eye catching memorabilia all over the place. The service is usually quite good, always a lady bartender that’s easy on the eyes. They have a rack of DirecTV receivers and various old and new TVs playing news and sports. They usually accomodate you if you want to watch something else. The beer selection is about 75% Macro Swill and Import Swill and 25% passable craft and large craft. Their house beer is made by Firestone Walker, they have a few taps of Craftsman, with cleaner lines than Lucky Baldwins, and a few Stone offerings. They also have some good stuff in bottle like Alesmith. The food menu will blow you away. It’s like a section out of a newspaper, and has every type of diner food in the world all laid out on color news print. It will blow you away. You can also get breakfast all day long which is good. The price is decent, and above average for Old Town Pasadena.

We stopped in for a beer in early afternoon. The place was dead. They have a good selection on tap and in bottles. Great decor, with fun vibe, although I could see it getting way too rowdy at night. Service was okay, but I think they hire for looks.

Not sure how this got added, to be frank. I feel that the Santa Monica locale has better taps. This is just a faux-graffiti’ed wannabe hangout. Dark, wood booths, kinda OC rocker. Not really your main beer destination in Pasadeezy...