Capital Cocktail Classic pub crawl returns with two new participants in the mix
- Steven Keith
- 1 hour ago
- 4 min read
Plus, Taste of Appalachia event brings plenty of local flavors
Fancy a fun pub crawl that features creative cocktails paired with tasty tapas?
Charleston’s popular Capital Cocktail Classic returns on Saturday, Oct. 18, this year – but this time with two new restaurants in the mix.
Newcomers Hagy’s Irish Pie Pub and The Volstead Room join returning participants Sam’s Uptown Café and Fife Street Brewing for this annual fundraising event presented by Fund for the Arts, an organization that supports 11 small local arts groups.
Ticket holders that night may visit all four locations at their leisure between 4-7 pm to sample a signature cocktail paired with a small plate of food at each place. At the end of the night, they get to cast their votes to help select this year’s winners for Best Cocktail and Best Tapas.
I was lucky enough to get to sample all four pairings earlier this month and, let me tell you, there’s not a bad option in the bunch.
Newbie Hagy’s Irish Pie Pub (908 Quarrier St.) will offer a bite-size Reuben pasty stuffed with corned beef and sauerkraut served with a side of Russian dressing. It will be paired with a sweet “Rusty Plum,” featuring Drambuie – a spiced and honey-spiked Scotch liqueur – blended with all spice and plum juice that has been cooked down, pureed and strained, with a dried pear garnish.
Just around the corner, The Volstead Room (209 Dickinson St.) will answer with a plate of creamy spinach, goat cheese and ricotta toasts with lemon, parsley, garlic and prosciutto served with a “Pear Fire Revere.” That lovely light libation mixes housemade toasted pear and rosemary syrup with prosecco, club soda and expressed lemon oil with a rosemary spring and sliced pear.
While those are two noble additions this year, they’re up against some pretty stiff competition.
Returning for its second year, Fife Street Brewing (180 Summers St.) is back in the ring with a delicious tahini and honey-marinated grilled chicken thigh and charred veggie kabob with lemon and garlic confit over orzo. That Mediterranean-inspired dish is appropriately accompanied by a crazy-good bright and nutty “Orzata Spritz” with Tito’s vodka, almond syrup, sparkling lemon seltzer and fresh lemon coming together in beautiful balanced harmony.
And last – but certainly not least – O.G. Sam’s Uptown Café will attempt to defend its 2024 Best Tapas crown with a hard-to-beat beef tenderloin smothered with mushroom sauce over a crispy potato cake with glazed carrots and toasted bread. I can’t stress enough how good this hearty fall beef dish was, and it paired really well with the “Kalimotxo” served alongside it.
That oddly named drink has an equally interesting background. Known as one of Lady Gaga’s favorite drinks and made famous on TikTok, this mix of red wine, Coca-Cola and maraschino cherries (which Sam’s replaced with lemon) is a popular way to make a quick sangria in the Basque region of Spain.
So after sampling all four food-and-drink pairings, what’s The Food Guy’s verdict?
Sam’s savory beef dish and Fife’s bright lemony cocktail are going to be hard to beat in my book. But the real winner will be the 11 local arts groups who will benefit from the funds raised that night.
“It’s such a fun way to help support the arts,” said Sarah Wright, the Executive Director for Fund for the Arts who joined me on each of the tastings. “We had featured Bar 101, Ichiban and D.T. Prime in the past, but those closures gave us the opportunity to change things up a bit. I think people will be really excited about the new offerings.”
West Virginia products in the spotlight
I also had a fun time tasting old favorites and discovering new flavors at Advantage Valley’s Taste of Appalachia food showcase at J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works in Malden last Thursday.
Designed to support local food producers, the event gave guests the opportunity to sample, purchase and order specially curated gift baskets featuring West Virginia-made products from nine counties.
Over the course three hours I got to speak to owner Michael Ervin from Coal River Coffee Company in St. Albans, roasters of one of my absolute favorite coffees on the planet: the “Hello Darkness, My Old Blend” collaboration sold and served at Mea Cuppa locations in Charleston.
I got to meet new friends like Rick & Connie Martin, owners of We B Fryin Snacks in Charleston, makers of one of my new favorite snacks: WheatOs! Looking and tasting like pork rinds, their pork-free alternatives are made with wheat instead, giving you all of the crunch and flavor without a greasy aftertaste.
They come in lots of flavors – smoky bacon, BBQ, hot and spicy, ranch, cinnamon and more – but I was intrigued how the new pizza version finishes with the distinctive taste of that last bite of pizza crust.
I munched on meatballs baked in original and spicy dark sauce made by Dark Hollow Foods in Dunbar and nibbled on chicken bites slathered booze-spiked bourbon, peach-rum and blueberry stout BBQ sauces made by Tipsy Roo’s in Charleston. I snacked on seasoned nuts from Sassy Gals Gourmet Treats in Ripley – some of them flavored with booze as well.
And I sipped on a zippy peach thyme spritzer made with Alderson’s JarHead Farms Peach Syrup and enjoyed an Old Fashioned with Alum Creek’s Ronk Family Farms Cinnamon-Infused Maple Syrup.
Plus there was an array of jams, jellies, sauces, salsas, honeys, butters, fruits, snacks, salts, mixes and more. So in addition to enjoying a nice evening, I got a great jump-start on my holiday shopping. Win-win!
Gift boxes filled with products featured at the event range in price from $30-55 and can be purchased online through Oct. 17 at www.tasteofappalachia.com.
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Steven Keith is a food writer and restaurant critic known as “The Food Guy” who writes a weekly column for the Charleston Gazette-Mail and has appeared in several state, regional and national culinary publications. Follow him online at www.wvfoodguy.com or on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. He can be reached at wvfoodguy@aol.com.