Beau's Oktoberfest

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Beau’s brewery of Lugtread and NightMarzen fame hosted an Oktoberfest celebration near Ottawa this weekend. S and I caught the bus out with Squeaky and Calimocho and we all met up with Peanut Butter and Jelly later. It was a little reunion of our old food club, the Gastronati.

We all got a free green alpine hat (made in China and which didn’t fit any of our heads) and immediately bought litre steins for $8 that became our drinking vessels for the day. I really liked the branding for the whole event. Their graphic designer, who also did Beau’s’ little tractor logo, was recruited to hand out armbands at the shuttle bus pickup. It seems every Beau’s employee was given a job to do.


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The food was very gourmet considering that we were in the middle of a farmer’s field eating off of hay bales. Some of Ottawa’s best restaurants that have Beau’s on tap came out to feed the people with lots of hearty stew-type dishes, perfect for the cold, damp weather.

Against a backdrop of happy oompah music, we ate fancy spaetzle poutine (which was so popular it ran out at 11:30 a.m.) and elk goulash from Murray Street, and a free raw oyster on the half shell from the Whalesbone.


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We also had two very nice dishes from the Urban Pear, a potato pancake with sausage slices and apple sauce, and a yummy hot cassoulet with chicken sausage, duck confit, smoked bacon and white beans and cabbage, real stick-to-your-ribs goodness!


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The only dish that really resembled traditional German fare was the Piggy Market’s Beau’s wurst on a bun with homemade condiments — very juicy and tasty. Squeaky took a big bite and I’m told a plume of sausage juice squirted onto my jacket. (I must have been too busy eating my delicious smoked fish chowder from Domus to notice.)


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Unfortunately, all the food ran out at around dinnertime because they had only really planned for about 1,000 and some 5,000 people came. They wisely ordered a large quantity of pizzas to keep people fed until 9 p.m. so that the next three hours weren’t pure alcohol!


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