Beijing’s Third Annual Craft Beer Festival drew thousands of visitors and brewers from around China to the Galaxy Soho complex in Chaoyangmen this weekend. It was some of the nicest whether Beijing has seen this year, with rainbows being spotted around the city.
![IMG_1168[1]](http://beijingcream.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/IMG_11681.jpg)
Brewers from around China attended. Bad Monkey brewery from Dali, Yunnan was there.
This guy inexplicably wearing lederhosen was there representing Taiwanese brewery le ble d’or was there.
Carl Setzer (right) took a break off of his main job scaring children in Nordic fairy tales (see below) and brought Great Leap Brewery along too.
Lots of other breweries were there too, but the highlight of the event was without a doubt the triumphant return of chef Kin Hong and his Taco Bar. Kin and his team sold tacos like hotcakes, attracting lines that easily eclipsed any of those waiting for beer.
Sploosh. I ate eight of them.
The Taco Bar will be reopening in Sanlitun in the coming months near the new Home Plate. Amazing.
Those tacos don’t even look yummy
White people really…really…should not try to pull off dreads. Especially if they look like 50 yr old former corporate types that are grasping at fleeting youth (guy on left)…
Patrick, I feel like you missed an opportunity for some serious laughs here.
I don’t see why I should have to pay 35 RMB to basically sample someone’s commercial product. 6 USD for 250 ml of beer? That’s nearly baseball game prices, but at least there you can watch baseball. You know, watching teams of world-class players who get paid millions of dollars to compete to be the best at the sport. Maybe some kind of “brew-off” would’ve made it worth it, but instead we got Jam Band.
The best part of the festival for me was going to the nearby CVS and purchasing two Harbin tallboys for 11.5 RMB.
I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about Taco Bar, but I found their tacos to be pretty disappointing. The fish was fried nicely, but was bland and had no substance. Their salsa was more like a watery salad vinaigrette. The carnitas wasn’t bad, though … and they did give me a free t-shirt for taking a long time. (At least someone there understood that we were waiting in lines all day while paying hand-over-fist to be marketed to.)
I don’t think so many laowais have been fucked in Beijing since Maggie’s got the hotdog stand.
Come on…don’t you know by now that anytime anyone offers something remotely exotic and missed by the (mostly) Americans in China (Tex-Mex), it’ll be fawned over, over-hyped and given a free pass despite the quality…especially if it’s “indy” and not sold by a mainstream establishment??
Two thumbs up for the Harbin tallboys.