Other Brother Beer Co. opens its new kitchen, featuring a classic brewery menu of 'greatest hits.'

“Yes!” bartender Justin Dimauro exclaims when I put in an early afternoon order for a classic caesar salad with fried chicken on top. “I always get so excited when people order that.”

It turns out this is a staff favorite on the menu at the refurbished and recently reopened kitchen at Other Brother Beer Co. in Seaside. (Other favorites include the kids menu chicken nuggets, which are shaped like dinosaurs.) The salad that arrives shortly thereafter is, as the name suggests, a straightforward caesar—romaine lettuce, tangy dressing, parmesan cheese and black pepper. On top are cubes of crispy, perfectly fried chicken. It’s all salty and delicious—and pairs perfectly with Other Brother’s Mexican-style dark lager Cerveza El Cuervo.

The new Other Brother kitchen, which officially opened on Sept. 13, has been in the works for a while. After Ad Astra moved out in April of this year, the brewery business decided to take food offerings in-house, with chef Josie Lewis at the helm. The result is a menu full of classic brewery food that’s fun and unpretentious—salads, burgers, sandwiches and snacks like loaded waffle fries and a hummus plate. It’s food that suits the space—a laid back neighborhood hang—and the time people spend there. The kitchen opens at 11:30am and closes at 8pm daily, staying open a little later (10pm) on Friday and Saturday while closing at 7pm on Sunday. 

Some menu items may be familiar if you’ve eaten at Other Brother in recent months. While the kitchen underwent necessary improvements, the team hosted various short-term pop-ups—Vinny’s Drive-Thru, a fried chicken sandwich pop-up and more. These events served as a kind of research and development for the full menu—“it’s basically a combination of all our greatest hits,” chef Lewis says.

The goal, Lewis explains, is to keep the food simple and affordable. Salads range from $12-$14, sandwiches are $14-$17. “Keeping really good food accessible to our community—it just adds to this space,” Lewis says. She envisions a menu that stays stable on the favorites, but adds specials from time to time—so keep an eye out for that.

The team also plans to keep opening their kitchen space to other chefs for one-off pop-ups. “Pop-ups have been part of our DNA from the beginning,” Other Brother cofounder Evan Loewy says. The next scheduled takeover, a pop-up by chefs John Harry, Adam Silverstein and Devin Fu, takes place Sunday, Oct. 8.