First impressions are everything. I generally get a feel for a restaurant in the first 5 min. How you’re greeted, the ambiance of the place and the menu. But looks can sometimes be deceiving. No Doubt, they have some great beers at the Blue Palms Brewhouse. It’s one of the few places in LA where you can get cask beer (more on that in a bit). We came on a Sunday night before a show at the Music Box. I expected this place to be packed, but we found a table right away. Sunday Night Football on one TV and baseball play-offs on another. Perfect. (I apologize for the bad photos, it was pretty dark inside.)

It took a couple of minutes before we were noticed, but the waitress finally brought our menus. Typical gastro pub fare. Burgers, wings, fish and chips, buffalo hot dog and a fine selection of twenty-four beers on tap. Several more minutes would pass before she returned to take our order. We sat waiting for our drinks for another 10 min or so. Finally, the bartender delivered them. 20 minutes after we order the waitress returns to tell us they were out of the BBQ Chicken sandwich. All in all took about 40 min to get our food from when we first sat down, with no apologies.

I got the Burger #2. A heavily salted, monster of a Kobe beef burger topped with braised short ribs, mushrooms, grilled onions and melted Gruyere cheese. The meat was overcooked, not medium like I had ordered, a little dry and dense. The flavor of the meat combination and nutty cheese was marvelous, but something on this was very salty. The bun held up well and surprisingly kept this burger in tact through the whole meal. If they cut back on the salt and didn’t overcook the meat, it would have been a top rated burger.

Cask Ales are a rare thing here in LA. Cask Ale or cask-conditioned beer is the term for unfiltered and unpasteurised beer which is conditioned and served from a cask, usually without additional nitrogen or carbon dioxide pressure. The Stone Smoked Porter (w/ American oak) cask beer here was a treat. With a sweet aroma, slightly smoky in flavor, with roasted malt, coffee and vanilla undertones.

It seemed disorganized for a place that’s been open for a few months. The waitress definitely couldn’t handle the workload and wasn’t very good at communicating the delays with us. It’s beer selection and flat screen TVs make it worth returning for. Seems like a great place to sit and have a beer and watch the game and hopefully the service won’t always be so lacking.