Beertown Public House

The name points at the taps. What comes out of the kitchen points nearly everywhere else: Korean BBQ duck wings, Yucatan chicken, a scampi rosé linguine, a burger stacked with brie and black truffle, all sent out under a sign that reads Beertown. This is the Cambridge public house where the whole idea began — Jody Palubiski first sketched the concept in 2009, and the first Beertown opened here on Hespeler Road in 2012. Craft beer is the premise. The menu is built so that a table that can't agree on one thing rarely has to.

Start with the Brisket Poutine. It is the most direct way into the comfort-food centre of the menu, a hearty opener with plenty of the list still left to explore. Beside it, the Korean BBQ Duck Wings show how far the kitchen will range — the plate that turns a round of burgers and fish into something broader than a standard pub order. From there the choices fan out: a Brie, Bacon and Black Truffle Burger, Public House Nachos and Spinach Artichoke Dip to share, Fish and Chips, Golden Fried Chicken, Steak Frites, a Seared Atlantic Salmon, a Beertown Pad Thai, and a Scampi Rosé Linguine that would not look out of place on an Italian menu. Dessert keeps the same salty-sweet logic in the Pretzel Crusted Brownie, with a Sticky Toffee Pudding for the traditionalists. Little of it holds to a single lane.

The beer list is the reason the name earns its keep. Beertown runs a rotating craft portfolio built on a simple idea: there should be something on tap for everyone, from the curious first-timer to the drinker who arrives with a style in mind. The atmosphere matches — a lively, modern-retro dining room that leans closer to a night out than a quiet dinner. On Friday and Saturday that energy has somewhere to go, with the kitchen and the taps both running until one in the morning, well past the hour when most tables nearby have been cleared.

The breadth is deliberate, not the byproduct of a long menu. The kitchen is built wide enough that the beer-first guest, the plant-based diner and the person who only wants a good burger can all order from the same page. The Plant-Based Beertown Burger is written into the main menu instead of tucked into a footnote — a small decision that says the kitchen is thinking about the whole table. What results is a gastropub that reads as a restaurant first and a bar second, even with the taps doing the marquee work.

That approach traces back to two people. Palubiski conceived Beertown in 2009 and opened this location three years later, which makes it the source the rest of the chain grew from rather than a franchise built to copy one. Todd Clarmo, the corporate executive chef, sets the culinary direction across the group, so the food here is not an outpost interpretation — it is the original the other kitchens work from. For the diner, that lineage mostly shows up as consistency: the ambition on the plate is the house standard, not a local flourish.

The day runs as wide as the menu. Weekend service opens at half past ten for brunch, early enough to anchor a fixed late-morning start before the afternoon fills in, and reservations hold the table when the group is large or the timing matters. That flexibility is most of the appeal for a mixed group — the beer-focused, the plant-based, and the comfort-food regular can all be planned into one booking without anyone compromising. A pint, a poutine, and a plate nobody at the table saw coming — the order sits as easily on a quiet Tuesday as on a Saturday night near last call.