The Avenue Pub

No orange slices, No muddling states the sign hanging above the well-worn copper bar-top inside the Avenue Pub. It may sound a bit pretentious, but the Avenue Pub is anything but that. Located along the streetcar line on its namesake St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans’ Lower Garden District, the laid-back pub hardly seems like it’d be a trove of sought-after craft brews, with its tin ceilings and veneer of urban grit; but the Avenue Pub is at once a neighborhood hangout and a destination for the beer-minded tourist.

The pub’s rise in notoriety among beer connoisseurs is the work of owner Polly Watts and her appreciation of high-quality beer, specifically from small, elusive European breweries. Following a stint in Louisville, Kentucky, Watts took the helm after Hurricane Katrina brought her back to New Orleans to help her father with operations. The pub was a well-loved neighborhood bar that locals frequented, but Watts’ exposure to fine Kentucky whiskey and top-notch beer fueled her desire to elevate its beverage offerings.

Early on, she saw a void in the Crescent City for specialty brews and “wanted to bring something to the table that was different than what the other major beer bars were doing,” said Watts. “At the time, that was as much a need as a desire because there were a lot of American breweries that wouldn’t ship to Louisiana. We worked closely with an importer that specializes in tiny little European breweries.”

Watts remembers clearly the first night the pub served beer from Stone Brewing, a San Diego-based brewery revered for its hoppy West Coast-style beers. “It was the Stone rollout night that busted our doors off so hard that we got a POS system. We were keeping all our tabs on paper slip index cards, like really old school. We had never been busy enough for that to matter,” said Watts. “We had so much business that night; there was such a need for that kind of craft beer in the community.”

Open twenty-four hours a day, the pub quickly earned the favor of local beer enthusiasts with an evolving tap list and high-tech draught system that blends carbon dioxide with nitrogen to optimize the flavor of each ale, stout, and cider. With fifty-plus taps featuring rotating selections that range from light session beers to high-gravity stouts and sours, the pub keeps customers coming back to wet their whistles with something new. “I am lucky my customer base shares my sense of adventure and wants to try different things all the time,” said Watts. 

It is this same sense of adventure that prompted Watts to close the bar for an unprecedented twelve days in May for a staff trip to visit the motherland of beer, Belgium. The decision to shutter a bar that never closes was not easy. “It was huge,” said General Manager Vickie Robinson. “This place is not set up to close down and walk away from. We didn’t have locks on the door. The last time we closed was for Hurricane Katrina, and we boarded it up.”

But Watts’ desire to instill the brewer’s passion for craft in her staff inspired the nine-day trip to the picturesque farmhouse breweries dotting the Belgian and French countrysides. She leveraged her relationships with small European breweries to arrange intimate visits for her staff with the brewers themselves, many of which do not offer public tours. 

“You get to know these people on a personal level and not just a blind-tasting level. It really changes your perspective on what you’re selling and what you’re doing,” said Watts. 

“It does,” agreed Robinson, who has been with the pub for thirty years. “You feel more vested in it and are able to talk about it with much more zeal. Every day was an exclusive experience.”

These tight-knit relationships with breweries also allow the pub to offer its customers unique events and tastings, the most popular being Zwanze Day held each fall. The bar is one of roughly sixty locations in the world chosen to participate in the coveted event, organized by Brasserie Cantillion in Belgium. Renowned for its lambic-style beers, which are spontaneously fermented by native airborne yeast, the hundred-year-plus family brewery releases a small batch of a special beer each fall, which is then only made available at select venues. One keg is sent to each participating bar chosen by Cantillion with the agreement that they will be tapped at the same time. “It is a world-wide event,” said Watts. “We don’t have control over it.” 

This year’s affair takes place on the afternoon of October 1 with a two o’clock (or 9 pm Belgian time) tapping of the exclusive beer, which features a blend of raspberries, blueberries, and bourbon vanilla beans. It is a tightly organized event, with Watts showing up outside the bar’s doors no earlier than nine in the morning to begin taking names for a chance to taste the elite release. If you miss out on one of the high-demand tickets, you can still enjoy other select beers on Zwanze Day. “We tap a whole lot of really special things that day and the night before for people who want to come in for the whole weekend,” said Watts. 

Of course, you can find a pretty unique beer at the bar on any day, and the gastropub’s impressive food menu further elevates your experience. With Nathanial Zimet of local restaurant Boucherie serving as consulting chef, you won’t be disappointed with a plate of their chicken confit or toast aux champignons to accompany your high-end brew. Vegans can even find several options on the varied menu.  But for Watts, it all comes down to providing a comfortable place for the neighborhood to gather. 

“If you go to other beer bars around the country who are as popular as we are for their beer selection, a lot of them are what I call beer bars with a capital B,” said Watts. “We are really not that. We still try to take a very low-brow approach to high-end beer. We are just a neighborhood place with a really exceptional beer list.” 

1732 St. Charles Avenue

New Orleans, La

(504) 586-9243 • theavenuepub.com