Birroteca Awards

Birroteca Restaurant Review:

About the restaurant: Birroteca is a “destination” restaurant, but not for the usual reasons: it isn’t a drop-dead swanky, blowout anniversary dinner kind of place. In fact, its main offerings are beer and pizza. However, its foodie buzz has led diners to seek out the vintage stone mill building, tucked into an industrial area by the Jones Falls. It’s not a place you’d happen on by accident, but once found, it’s destined to be a keeper.

Food & Drinks: Birroteca is, of course, a mecca for beer lovers --- the name is a play on enoteca, or wine bar --- with 24 taps devoted mostly to local craft brews. (There are artisanal cocktails and wines to be savored as well.) But the restaurant also offers thin-crusted designer pizzas, elegant small plates, charcuterie and pasta. If the signature dish, the ultra-rich Duck, Duck Goose pizza, with duck confit, fig-onion jam and a cooked duck egg, doesn’t appeal, try the garlicky, lemony grilled calamari or the pappardelle with wild boar meat sauce. The stone-walled dining room can get noisy but is always convivial, and the paper-covered tables invite doodlers. Who knows, your artwork may join the framed sketches displayed on the wall.