Robin Shepard
Taste of Sichuan is the newest Chinese restaurant on State Street. It has taken over the former Soga Shabu Shabu at 515 State St. The restaurant specializes, as the name suggests, in Sichuan-style food, but the menu remains very similar to Soga Shabu Shabu’s and goes beyond American-Chinese standards. The hot pot remains, too.
Giant Jones Brewing Company, 931 E. Main St., has followed through with one of its original goals: it’s been certified organic. All ingredients in Giant Jones beers will be organic, even though it makes sourcing malts and hops more difficult and more expensive. “The number available to you shrinks dramatically,” says co-owner and brewer Jessica Jones. But it’s about the future of the planet. “We only have one, and a lot of the things we’re doing to it are screwing it up,” says Jones.
“Organic is never a flavor proposition; it’s a growing proposition — how you’re treating the soil, the microbiome,” she adds. However, “When you feel ethically good about where your food comes from, it will taste better. Our emotional and psychological well-being contributes to our perception of flavor.”
While organic beer is still an outlier, there are more suppliers carrying some organic ingredients, and a few other organic breweries have opened — Uncommon Ground in Chicago and Bang Brewing in St. Paul.
But eventually, says Jones, making beer is not going to be ethical. “With climate change, the amount of land available for agriculture is shifting, and if it continues to shrink, we’ll have to prioritize feeding people rather than taking agricultural products and using them for leisure,” she says. “This stuff is happening quickly.”
Union Corners Brewery has petitioned for and received a third 90-day extension of its alcohol license in order to give it more time to finally get up and running at 2438 Winnebago St. A part of the Union Corners project, the brewpub will occupy 5,000 square feet in the Carbon Building. Construction began Oct. 17, and brewery owner Eric Peterson, in a letter to the city’s Alcohol License Review Committee, says he expects to be finished in March.
— Linda Falkenstein