Liars' Club Alpine Tavern & Grill

warmstorage

Georgia

4.4/5  rDev +0.7%
vibe: 4 | quality: 5 | service: 4.5 | selection: 4.5 | food: 2.5

The local beer selection is just as amazing as everyone else has said: tap list includes Stone; Alesmith (three tonight, including Wee Heavy, and Speedway Stout); Alpine (Pure Hoppiness); Ballast Point (including their hefe and pale); Port Brewing (of Pizza Port fame, I saw the SPA and one other, perhaps a red?). Tonight was $2.50 local brews, an amazing deal for such a great selection of locals, including a great cask Alpine Pure Hoppiness, which was beautifully floral, hoppy, and utterly drinkable.

The taps are all easily visible; the lines taste clean and the brews fresh. All tap was being served in chilled pint glasses, a little questionable with some of the brews, but this is a minor quibble. The Belgians in bottles that were beign drunk on the bar were in more appropriate (broad) tulips. When I asked the bartender why they even bother selling bad (oops, bud) and coors, he replied that "morons come in and ask for it." Nice.

Check out their web page at www.liarsclubsd.com to get a good sense of the attitude of the place: these are real people, running a real business, with real beer.

The jukebox is, indeed, great. Their webpage notes the top ten played groups (including The Clash, Johnny Cash, The Pixies, The Pogues, The Ramones), and explains what bands will NOT be heard on the jukebox (The Eagles, Jimmy Buffet, Sublime, Limp Biskit, or Journey.)

It's actually not as divey as some have indicated: sure, it's a hole in the wall style, but tonight's crowd was pretty standard for the MB/PB (Mission Beach/Pacific Beach) area: a few young hipsters, a bunch of loud, overdressed (for drinking) barhoppers, and a few locals, as local as anyone really can be in MB. In terms of the decor and atmosphere, I suppose it's vaguely divey, but mostly in comparison to steel-and-brass-and-wood brewpubs (here in San Diego, think Karl Strauss' overproduced corporate atmosphere.)

The food basically sucked: it was just barely fine, that is, it didn't taste bad. But it was uninspired, even for bar food, too pricey (and a little too high concept) to really qualify as bar food, and just didn't taste very good. The presentation is nice, but little else can be said for the food. But c'mon: we go here for the amazing, fresh, highly local, diverse, real and even challenging beer. Eat before you go.

The staff were awesome: friendly and attentive, even when they were packed. (Which, interestingly, they were much busier between 7pm and 8:30pm, and then started to really die down around 9pm.) They paid attention to beer levels, and ran their butts off to get beer out to people.

Parking really isn't all that terrible: you just have to keep a close eye out, be willing to walk a block or three, drive a small car, and be good at parallel parking.

In sum: the Liar's Club is a fantastic place for local, fresh, challenging, big, interesting beers, with a real feel, and no pretense. I go all the time.

p.s. Next Saturday's 5th anniversary gives an idea of the kinds of amazing beers they get: Russian River's Pliny the Younger Triple IPA, and Rejection Belgian Black Ale; Ballast Point's Hout Ont Moet, Wood-aged Blackberry Ale, and Tongue Buckler Imperial Amber; AleSmith cask-conditioned Wee Heavy; Russian River Pliny the Elder. YUM!

02-05-2005 07:23:00 | More by warmstorage

oggg

California

4.5/5  rDev +3%
vibe: 4.5 | quality: 4.5 | service: 4.5 | selection: 4.5

Visited this small beer bar on a Friday night, when they had their $2.50 local beer night. IIt's a bit tough to find parking, and it's got a relatively small sign.

This place has a small outdoor patio where the locals people- watch and drink Miller High Life bottles. Once you go in, it's sort of a grungy Johnny Rockets. The place looks like a former diner, with cute four person booths and some small high tables with stools. Don't get me wrong, it totally works. The crowd is the 20-something crowd, and I would guess a 40% piercing rate. Waitresses know their stuff but aren't as cute as at O'Briens. The bar is overflowing with bottles of hard liquor, a Jagermester shot machine, and 15 or so taps.

As I mentioned before, we went on the $2.50 local pint night, and in most places, this usually means they have one uninteresting beer on discount. However, here, it meant we could choose from like 4 different AleSmiths, including Grand Cru, 2 Ballast Points, a couple of Stones, and a few more I can't remember. In addition, they had Pliny the Elder from Russian River, as well as a few other out of town beers. Plus I believe they have some Belgians in bottles. They have 2 contract brews, I think one from PizzaPort and one from AleSmith. On the menu, there is a section "Unrecommended - Bud, Miller". Btw, I'm really wondering how people could buy Miller High Life bottles when the local brews were only $2.50. I mean, Miller can't cost that much less, can it?

We didn't try the food but the menu looks pretty tasty. They also have $2 appetizer happy hours.

Overall: much livelier than O'Briens, and less IPA focused. Less easy to chat with the other patrons than O'Briens, so bring your own friends.

06-21-2004 00:09:42 | More by oggg

TheLongBeachBum

California

4.44/5  rDev +1.6%
vibe: 4 | quality: 4.5 | service: 4.5 | selection: 4.5

This was the Sixth Stop of the day on fellow BA EyeChartBrews Bachelor Tour cum San Diego Pub Crawl by Bus. Talk about leaving the best until last!!!

Liars Club is very close to the Beach, and the setting for the area is therefore very much oriented around the Beach Feel. Along with surrounding small businesses and wooden beach houses, also comes crappy parking though. Thankfully we arrived in our very own Beer-Bus that dropped us off outside, but not after driving past many CHP and Police Cars on the way down. Drink Responsibly is a motto that should be headed if you intend driving here it would seem!

Walking through a slightly raised opened up patio area, as you enter, the Bar runs down your right hand side. An assortment of Booths, Tall Tables and Chairs and a reasonable open floor feel complete the interior. Decoration is decidedly “no-frills” and the imagery is of a dive bar (which I love). Against the back wall is the Liars Club secret weapon, a CD Juke Box that is a veritable grotto of Punk, Rock and Metal masterpieces.

A massive array of bottles containing liquors, whisky, bourbons and other colored delights plaster the back of the bar area. Occasionally, you will spot a bank of around 10 Taps nestled in amongst them. There were three of these Tap Banks I noted running the length of the Bar on the back wall dispensing around 24 beers. The beer range was superb; lots of great local beers on Tap make that first beer decision an extremely difficult one. A couple of macros complete the line-up, though they are somewhat begrudgingly listed. The bottled beer range is pretty good also. As this was EyeChartBrews Bachelor Party, the sight of Hanssens Oude Kriek on the bottle list was simply too much to handle, so I purchased Two 750ml Bottles and got three glasses, tall pint sized flutes, ideal glassware for this dry fruity lambic monster. Unfortunately we also decided to finish the night with several rounds of Jagermeister Chasers. Oh well.

The whole Bar has a really great “take me as you see me” feel. It does not pretend to be anything it isn’t. What it does purport to be, it does extremely well.

A Top Notch, ‘Down to Earth’ Dive Bar Drinking Den that I could easily frequent all day, and all night, whilst working my way through the superb Beer List, and reliving my youth thanks to the seriously cool Metal and Punk orientated Juke Box. Absolutely Excellent, I so wish I lived closer.

Probably my favorite San Diego Bar so far. I simply must get back here.

Last Visit: 6th March 2004

03-08-2004 04:27:48 | More by TheLongBeachBum

AtLagerHeads

Ohio

4.2/5  rDev -3.9%
vibe: 4 | quality: 4.5 | service: 4 | selection: 4 | food: 4.5

I hadn't been to the beach here in years, but the Beerfly review of this spot drew me in and I'm glad it did. Super little spot for music, beer, and food.

Don't look for fancy or trendy fixtures and furniture, 'cause you'll be disappointed. But not if you love great little bars with super draft beer selections. Ranging from Stone's to Alesmith to Bear Republic you'll find some really great brewskies to munch on. And the munchies themselves ain't too tawdry either.

The corrugated metal used around the room was cool as was the neat little deck to the sidewalk front to give open air legality to the smokers in the bar. I loved the chalkboard listing of brews that listed all the great tap beers and then had a section headed "Not Recommended" that listed Millers and Coors light beers. Nice sports TV placement and very cool music pounds a beat constantly.

Hard place to find parking. But make the effort if you like a great little hole-in-the-wall bar with great beer.

11-02-2003 05:57:22 | More by AtLagerHeads

spazaru

California

4.6/5  rDev +5.3%
vibe: 4 | quality: 5 | service: 4 | selection: 5

Simply the coolest bar in San Diego. It would really be cool if they had an a/c during the summer, but that's nitpicking. Any place that has a great selection of locally brewed beers on tap, and killer old punk/british new wave on the jukebox has got to be great. The Liars Brew ESB is actually Alesmith Anvil under another name and is awesome. The service is great, the people are friendly, it's 50 feet from the beach and the beer is very reasonably priced especially Friday, when locals are $2.50/pint 4 to close. What more could you want?

09-06-2003 16:32:08 | More by spazaru

saskguy

Saskatchewan (Canada)

4.47/5  rDev +2.3%
vibe: 4.5 | quality: 4 | service: 4.5 | selection: 5 | food: 4.5 | $$

Great beer selection. Staff that know the beer. Good music! Parking is a pain (try near the marina on the mission bay side...).

The food was plentiful. Even my kids enjoyed it.

Small place with a friendly feel. Next time I am in San Diego, its where I will go!

Dec 2003: Just had a chance to revisit the Liars club and once again found a great selection of beers and a friendly staff. They had around 20 beers on tap or at least that whatI remember trying.... The Juke box is still stuffed full of great tunes.

08-15-2003 22:18:44 | More by saskguy