Dallas Craft Beer Examiner

The ceilings are high, and the tall windows let in a lot of light—especially at night with the electronic ad-screen across the street. The bar top is still pristine, and the structure is just one featureless retail slot of a larger commercial complex. The kitchen is the same, and the new beer tap system belongs about 15 minutes into the future.

However, once you talk to the staff, it’s all familiar as The Common Table. There’s something in the bar’s DNA.

Tonight’s focus is the latest beer-pairing dinner, a multi-course affair that TCT has perfected over the years at their original Uptown Dallas location. Although on hiatus for the past couple of seasons, the event has been resurrected for the opening of the new Frisco store as the “Ale-Star Series” that, so far, has featured some of the most prominent craft brewers in the United States and their hand-selected menus of beers.

The most recent was Texas’ own Jester King Brewery and featuring head brewer Averie Swanson. (Despite craft beer’s recent success, women are still woefully underrepresented in the industry.) As a very unique farmhouse brewery in Austin’s Hill Country, Jester King’s artisanal beers can be a challenge to pair with food given their sour, pungent and creatively wild-fermented beers and related blends. This led to a (mostly) all-seafood dinner, lighter fare such as seared halibut cheeks with an orange-ginger sauce and a delectable cheese course with house-made lavash and Red Hawk cheese from Cowgirl Creamery.

Jerry Jones built “The Star” in Frisco as the Cowboys’ new headquarters and practice facility, and it has been progressively attracting restaurants, bars and clubs like a planet capturing new moons. The Common Table, one of Dallas’ premier craft beer establishments since 2010, was actually courted to expand with a second location at The Star, which opened late last fall. Since then, it has been working to find its beer legs in the burgeoning craft beer environment of the newly paved ‘burbs north of LBJ.

One evening near the end of March, a similar event focused on Avery Brewing of Colorado with owner/founder Adam Avery as host. Avery (both the man and the brewery) are considered part of the industry’s old guard, pioneering craft beer across the nation before other states even acknowledged the business model. This dinner featured a more internationally inspired menu with Moroccan-style Colorado roasted leg of lamb, butternut squash and sweet potato tajine, and plump PEI mussels in a Spanish chorizo and tomato broth.

The Avery dinner might have been one food course shorter than typical, but that was hardly noticed once the paired brewery beers started to fly. With Avery’s longevity in the market and long-reaching skills of brewing and aging beers, glasses of Tectum et Elix (ale aged in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels), Fimbulvvinter (rum barrel-aged Belgian-style quintuple) and the scowling face of Winston Churchill on the label of Old Perseverance (bourbon barrel-aged ale with maple syrup and dark muscovado sugar) crowded the tables by evening’s end.

Once you talk to the staff, it’s all familiar as The Common Table. There’s something in the bar’s DNA.

This Frisco shop is helmed by Glen Stivison, an experienced manager of local craft beer establishments, and Chief Beer & Tunes Officer Corey Pond now splits his time between the two locations. The new place has extensive patio space, including the long outdoor seating that is its namesake, while a light wood wraparound bar anchors the inside space. A local music series that mirrors the Uptown TCT lineup has begun with the warmer months and should only improve throughout the summer.

Early March saw California’s Firestone Walker Brewing swing into North Texas for a beer dinner with owner David Walker hosting despite suffering through a mild respiratory bug. The brewery’s limited-edition Dark & Stormy, a rum barrel-aged ale with lime and coconut (designed to match the cocktail), shared the evening with more classic dining selections such as bone-in chateaubriand with charred onion au jus (liquid crack!), tiger prawn ceviche with mango and serrano chiles, and a strawberry rhubarb spinach salad with blue cheese.

The Common Table has a long history of both beer-pairing events and playing host to notable brewers both national and international, one of few places in Texas (and a mere handful in North Texas) that can rate such consideration. This reputation is earned through the relationships that Pond has personally cultivated with craft brewers around the country, both as a business owner and an eager evangelist for and unashamed enthusiast in the movement. To his credit, he is not difficult to find at either of his bars, often tugging on his vape with a coffee cup filled with Founders Breakfast Stout nearby.

What may be the best evidence for TCT’s draw is the dinner that kicked off this current series in late February featuring Brooklyn Brewery. This night was hosted by brewer emeritus Garrett Oliver, former head brewer turned author, speaker, presenter and all-around craft beer bon vivant (and to The Common Table’s reputation, not the first time he has hosted a night here). Where Oliver goes, serious craft beer cred is automatically bestowed.

The Brooklyn Brewery beer-pairing dinner on a cool evening in February stands out as one of the finest craft beer events I’ve ever attended. Not only were diners treated to a stunning A5 Wagyu tomahawk steak (properly seared with help from Dee Lincoln Prime across the street) with bone marrow butter, other courses included a fine New Zealand lamb carpaccio and an amazing Manhattan littleneck clam chowder that is still spoken about.

Not to be outdone, Oliver brought with him a couple of his famous “ghost bottles,” unapproved small-batch or experimental beers that generally do not leave the New York brewery outside of the pockets of employees. The expected Black Ops imperial stout, a wild ale named Kiwi’s Playhouse, and a Belgian-style golden ale named Aglovale (an Arthurian reference) all paired magnificently with each course of the meal—none of which compare to the included complimentary signed copy of Oliver’s book The Brewmaster’s Table and the simple thrill of just hanging out and chatting with him.

It’s still very early days for this place on the bar/restaurant scale, but spawning a clone has not seemed to slow them down. If you have never enjoyed a beer-pairing dinner, Frisco’s The Common Table is an excellent place to start. SD