Sunday Dinner Club - "Made Wrong" Burgers at Half Acre Brewery

 

I like Sunday Dinner Club, the underground dinner club that hosts dinners with many various themes and I try to go several times a year.  Their main location is above their restaurant, Honey Butter Fried Chicken, which itself started as a Sunday Dinner Club dinner, but several times a year they will partner with Half Acre Brewery for a dinner at one of their tap rooms (mostly the Lincoln Tap Room).  These dinners are similar to the dinners in their home space in that when people are checked in and seated, they will come out and introduce themselves.  With the dinners at Half Acre, a Half Acre rep will first introduce themselves and welcome everyone before introducing the SDC crew who will then introduce themselves, tell the story of Sunday Dinner Club, and tell everyone about the dinner they will be having.  The dinners at SDC Headquarters are BYOB, but the ones at Half Acre come with four beers.  This dinner also came with a sample of Camchi's Kimchi, a product from one of their crew that they plan on commercializing.  The beers that I started with were Eat Shop Apricot Milkshake IPA with Lactose and Apricot and Deep Space Double IPA, both IPAs, but very diffwewnt from one another.  Eat Shop Apricot was creamy and hazy with a nice soft mouthfeel and apricot and tropical flavors.  Deep Space was decidedly heavier with grapefruit and pine flavors and a nice dry finish.  

Their former sous chef Becca, had an enormously popular Cubano sandwich which they used as a theme for a pop up at Revival Food Hall.  It was also very successful, so there is now thought of opening another restaurant under the Sunday Dinner Club umbrella.  While the Cubano Sandwich is good, it's hard to build a restaurant on one item, so this dinner was sort of a try out to expand the menu.  For this dinner, they did a spin on the Maid-Rite Burger, a spiced loose meat sandwich similar to a sloppy joe without sauce, they called a "Made Wrong" Burger.  It was also a spiced loose meat sandwich on a bun, but it also had Camchi's Kimchi made with Cucumbers and Carrots, Spicy Aioli, and Muenster Cheese.  It was served with a very good Potato Salad made with Mustard and Spices.

For my beers to drink with dinner and finish off, I went with Shrub Tundra Coffee Brown Ale and another IPA, Half Acre makes a lot of IPAs, Fluorescent IPA.  Shrub Tundra is a collaboration with a local coffee roaster, Dark Matter Coffee, uses 5% liquid coffee by volume, the variety of which varies every year.  This years blend had a nice head, light carbonation, and a thin mouthfeel.  The coffee aroma and flavor were good and while there was a hop flavor, it was light.  Fluorescent IPA poured light yellow with a light haze.  It has a medium body and tropical flavors and was pretty good.

To finish our dinner, we were served Brownies.  I really like brownies in general, but these brownies were pretty fantastic.  The Brownie was Dark Chocolate topped with Peppermint Cream Cheese and Fueilletine Flakes.  Fueilletine, meaning leaves, is a very light pastry that tastes like a very light and crispy sugar cone and provided a nice crunch to the brownie.  The brownie had a great flavor and provided a great finish to a great dinner.  While Sunday Dinner Club does not do just one thing, there style is very homey and a lot of what they do is to elevate comfort foods.  I have liked the dinners that I have had with SDC, and I will continue going to their dinners.