My biggest vice and greatest pleasure in life is my penchant for good food and drink. So I had a really enjoyable time at the new brewery on Church Street in Cambridge — the Rock Bottom Brewery and its annex Sliders. In fact I am now a regular at Sliders. Rock Bottom is the type of place that you could work into an entire afternoon and evening. I would recommend having lunch at the brewery. They have a bright, open atmosphere and the decor has a modern southwestern feel. I found the staff friendly and knowledgeable.
Although the restaurant has some of the typical chain restaurant feel, it still is a good time with a broad menu from soup and salad to steak and lasagna. We tried the chicken salad and the chicken Genovese — at the suggestion of our waiter and were served quickly and deliciously. The prices were fairly average; it would be reasonable to expect to pay about $20 a person for food and drinks. For drinks we tried out the beer sampler, which consists of small glasses of all the beers made by Rock Bottom. The brewery has something for everyone when it comes to beer. My favorite, because of its name, was the “Lumpy Dog Light Lager,” a light easy drinking lunch beer. They also have a hoppy double-barreled IPA that is fortified with vitamin B to ward off hangovers, an interesting fact I learned from a very informative member of the staff —a staff that is available to explain everything you never knew about how to make beer.
Following lunch one might take a tour of the brewery or explore Harvard Square and, after a nice afternoon in Cambridge, head back to Sliders for a happy hour before going out for the evening. It is a fun bar and short order grill where you can get beer brewed at Rock Bottom and mini-burgers. Boston has never seemed like a very hospitable city but Sliders belies the fact. I felt very comfortable there with the laid back atmosphere and friendly people. It’s the kind of place where I know I will have a good time if I go there by myself — if it were in another city it might be an after hours bar, though here in Massachusetts it is more of a pre-going out bar. The managers encourage people to start at Sliders, where they can get free passes to clubs on Lansdowne Street, and then hit the clubs for the night, a regimen I sympathize with: take next Saturday and go have lunch at the Rock Bottom Brewery, explore the town in the afternoon, come back to Sliders for drinks and get free club passes or go the movie theater right next door.
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