Update: This restaurant has closed.
Atmosphere: 3/5 ♦ Service: 4/5 ♦ Food Quality: 4/5 ♦ Value: 3/5 Times Visited: One ♦ Will I Return?: Sure, if I’m in the neighborhood ___________
Cafe Biere is a great little place on Adeline Street in Emeryville. While a little out of the way for us Hayward-ites, it’s a fun little dinner and drinks place if you happen to be enjoying a night out at Ikea or…whatever else is in Emeryville.
Mostly a beer pub (that is pretty serious about their beer selection, mind you), this place also classes it up with home made sangria and a pretty substantial menu of fun foods. And by “fun”, I don’t mean typical “bar” foods. While they do offer a tantalizing variety of fried foods (beer battered mushrooms, fried calamari, sweet potato fries, regular fries, chicken fingers and fish ‘n chips), they also serve starters like mussels, spiced nuts, a cheese plate, roasted beet salad and potato cheese balls.
Main dishes are casual but not drab: fried chicken sandwich, cheese panini, steak sandwich, po’ boy sandwich (fried oysters) and three different kinds of burgers (grilled portabello, regular and lamb) grace the menu as well. While I can’t attest to most of the menu’s supposed deliciousness, these are the things ordered at our table:
Fried mushrooms in house made beer batter.
Onion rings (beer battered)
Mashed potatoes
Macaroni and cheese in the foreground with a side of grilled veggies behind
Three of us ordered these four sides (the onion rings were someone else’s at the table) and shared. It was awesome. Granted, it was a carb-loading madness type of situation, but sometimes you need that, you know? The beer batter on the mushrooms and especially the onion rings (yeah, I totally stole some from my friend) was fabulous. Some of the best I’ve ever had. Everything was pretty dang good; the mac and cheese was creamy and yum, the veggies were tasty, the fried mushrooms were, well, fried, and the mashed potatoes were heavenly, undoubtedly due to the greater proportions of cream and butter than potato.
Our other friends all ordered the mussels which they seemed to love. This appears to be a sort of “featured” specialty item that they have which people come specially to eat. I did not try them; I think mussels are yucky. But, the menu offers a few different styles of “toppings” (or sauces, really?) to go with them, which is pretty fun if you like the little guys.
Mussel plate
My only complaints about this place are that the inside space is very small, very loud and very crowded. We ate out on the patio which was a bit cold and was only mildly aided by the heat lamp next to our table (better than nothing though, for sure). Maybe on a quiet night (if they have them) it would be more mellow, but it was a bit too hectic for my taste. Though they do have board games that you can play, which probably cancels out at least one of those complaints. And the owners are super nice. And the beer batter was to die for. So yeah, I’d definitely go back.
Clearly a win, all in all. For beer and beer batter, head to Cafe Biere!
I definitely drove by this place for the first time ever yesterday and thought, “Oh, how very European!” I couldn’t tell whether it was still in business or not–you know how nighttime restaurants look during the day…kind of eerie and vacant. Glad to hear that it’s a hit, though!