One of my largest accounts is located in the northwest suburbs of Detroit. I was there to have a meeting with them recently and I got in the night before the meeting. I was looking for someplace to dine that night - a place that had good food and a good beer selection. After looking up a couple places that were close to the hotel, I settled upon a place that was just down the road a mile or so called Sedona Taphouse.
I wasn't familiar with Sedona Taphouse and found out after the fact that it was a chain that was found more in the Eastern part of the U.S. Dennis Barbaro is no stranger to the restaurant business. The New York native was a director in the Chi Chi's organization when that restaurant was at its heights in the 1990's. In 1995, he joined OSI Restaurant Partners which was the parent company of Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba's and Bonefish Grill. He was the managing partner for some Outback Steakhouse franchises and later a Bonefish Grill in Williamsburg, VA.
Pictured right - Dennis Barbaro. Photo courtesy Chesterfield Observer.
Barbaro had a love for craft beer and the foods of the southwest, and in 2010 he came up with a new concept restaurant that would focus on those two things. The first Sedona Taphouse was opened in Midlothian, VA, a suburb of Richmond, in 2011. Two years later, a second Sedona Taphouse opened in Charlottesville, VA. A location in Connecticut was soon opened, along with one more in Virginia and one in New York. The Troy, MI location opened in 2017. Today, there are 16 locations in 8 states with a new one slated to open in Pennsylvania early this year. In addition to the Sedona Taphouse restaurants, Barbaro recently opened a new concept restaurant - Napa Kitchen & Wine in suburban Richmond, VA - that focuses on fresh-sourced foods and wines from the Napa Valley.
To get from hotel to Sedona Taphouse, I had to make some U-turn maneuvers that I hadn't encountered in my travels. Big Beaver Road, which Sedona Taphouse is next to, has a series of light-controlled U-turn lanes rather than left-hand turn lanes. After figuring out how to get across Big Beaver Road, I pulled into the Sedona Taphouse around 7 p.m. (see map) There's a large parking lot behind the restaurant and it was packed. I finally came across someone who was leaving and I was able to park there.
Inside the restaurant was a large dining area with a number of booths and tables with "Sputnik" Edison-light chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Just like the parking lot, the dining area was packed and there were people waiting for tables to open up. I found out later that there is an upper deck outdoor patio and there were a number of people up there, as well. I figured that the place must be good if there's a crowd in there on a week night and people are waiting for a table.
I asked the hostess if I could sit at the bar and she said it was no problem. The long bar had a few open seats and I was able to sit in front of the tappers in the middle part of the bar. A brick facade with the Sedona Taphouse logo on it was just above the tappers. Glass-front refrigerators on either side of the taps were filled with cans and bottles of craft and imported beers, ciders and sours.
There were three people bartending and it was a tag team effort waiting on me that evening. One of the bartenders, a young woman who was working pretty hard, came over with a food menu and a beer menu. They had 50 beers on tap and well over 150 different types of beers in cans and bottles including over 60 different types of India Pale Ale beers to choose from. I was sort of surprised to see a couple IPA's from the Toppling Goliath brewery in Decorah, IA. I didn't realize that Toppling Goliath had that far of a reach as Troy, MI is well over 500 miles away from Decorah.
As I was looking through the beer menu, I was getting annoyed by a guy sitting next to me who was talking about work with who I deemed was a female co-worker. He was loud, obnoxious and very obviously drunk. He started telling the woman next to him some off-color and somewhat racist jokes. After one joke that clearly crossed the line with her, she got up and said, "That's it. I'm out of here." The guy protested loudly and told her to come back. But she didn't want anything to do with him. It was at that point the lady bartender told him that he needed to pay his bill and leave. He was sort of quiet and contrite after that. He soon left and I had more room to spread out.
I wanted a hazy IPA, but I certainly wasn't going to get a Toppling Goliath Pseudo Sue as I can get that back home in Iowa pretty much about anywhere. I saw a beer on the beer menu, a hazy IPA called Elephant Juice from the Eastern Market Brewing Company, a local brewery in Detroit. I asked one of the male bartenders if I could get a taste of that. The female bartender ended up bringing it to me and I took a drink. I liked it and ordered that. She went over to the spigot and started to pour the beer. Right then the keg blew splattering her with foam.
She came back to me and said, "I'm so, so sorry, but the keg blew." The front of her shirt was splattered with remnants of the blown keg.
"Yeah, I can see that," I said. She said she was going to go check to see if they had another keg of it. About two minutes later she came back and said that they appeared to be out of that beer. I winced and sort of groaned.
One of the other bartenders was standing next to her and he saw my reaction. "What's the matter," he questioned both of us. She told him that the Elephant Juice had blown and they didn't have another keg. "Oh, yeah," he said in a matter-of-fact manner. "There's one back there. I'll go get it and hook it up."
The female bartender turned to me and said, "He must have it in a special place back there because I certainly couldn't find it." Moments later, the male bartender came back out front, gave the female bartender the "thumbs up" and she poured me a fresh beer from the new keg. And it was worth the wait. It was an excellent beer and I should have gone to a beer store and looked for some to bring back home with me.
The food menu featured a wide variety of dishes including wood-grilled steaks, pasta, seafood, burgers and specialty tacos. The broiled mahi mahi tacos caught my attention right off the bat. They were topped with avocado slices, sautéed onions, a pineapple mango salsa and a chimi aioli. The fish tacos were finished with cilantro on top. OK - I was keeping that open as an option.
But they also had a Cajun pasta dish that had andouille sausage and shrimp tossed with fettuccine noodles and sautéed mushrooms in a spicy alfredo sauce. Oooo... That made my stomach do jumping jacks, it sounded so good.
Under the "house specialties" section of the menu, they had a couple three things that I saw including a walleye piccata - lightly breaded and pan-seared walleye filets topped with a lemony piccata sauce with capers. That sounded pretty good to me, as did the chicken marsala - an 8 ounce grilled chicken breast topped with a house-made marsala sauce with sautéed mushrooms. Man, there were so many things on the menu that were tripping my trigger that I thought I couldn't lose with any of my choices.
I did order something off the "house specialities" part of the menu and it came with a fresh organic greens dinner salad with sliced fresh tomatoes, heart of palm, and red onions. The dressing was a balsamic vinaigrette that really popped on the tongue. Combined with the freshness of the greens and veggies, the salad was a great start to the meal.
I got the barbecued beef short ribs - chunks of angus beef slow-roasted and then finished on a wood-fired grill topped with a sweet Kansas City-style barbecue sauce. The beef chunks were resting on a bed of garlic-mashed potatoes and a side of a jicama slaw. The beef was tender and very flavorful with a nice wood-smoked flavor that showed through the sweet barbecue sauce. There was an ample amount of beef on the plate and it was so good that I devoured the beef down to the last bite. The garlic-mashed potatoes were a great complement to the barbecued short ribs. It was a fantastic meal.
While I normally don't like going to chains, I would have no problem heading back to a Sedona Taphouse should I come across one on the road. I understand that each location has a unique menu and what you get in Troy, MI may not be the same thing in, say, Charlottesville, VA or Nashville. What I had at the Troy location - the barbecue beef short ribs - were simply outstanding. And you can't beat the beer selection, both on tap and in cans and bottles. With so many choices of beers and different types of beers, there's something for any beer aficionado. And I also have to give a shout out to the trio of bartenders who worked as a team to make me feel comfortable and to take care of me that evening. All those combinations made my visit to Sedona Taphouse a tremendous experience.
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