The Beamhouse

I don’t get to many restaurants East of the Connecticut River and if The Beamhouse is an example of what I am missing, I should correct that. I took my sons here for dinner for my youngest son’s birthday on Thursday night. He lives in Willimantic and since it was his birthday, I was meeting him over halfway to take him to dinner. I got some Facebook recommendations for places over that way and after much brow beating, he finally picked a restaurant, The Beamhouse. I think the only reason he picked it was it was the first one that came up the last time I harassed him to pick. Fortunately his unwillingness to pick and my belligerence in getting him to finally pick resulted in a good choice.

The Tannery

The Beamhouse is in the middle of The Tannery, an Apartment complex off Flanagan Road. I know the address says New London Turnpike, but trust me you must enter from Flanagan Road. In between the f3 story brick Apartment buildings is a one-story section that houses the apartment’s gym, something called The Founders Club and most importantly to all of us non-Tannery apartment dwellers, directly in between The Beamhouse. As you navigate down the walkway between the Founders Club and the glassed-in gym, you get the feel of a high tech, high end place, that makes you second guess your decision to dress casually. What were we thinking? This is Glastonbury after all. Fortunately, upon entering the building you can breathe a sigh of relief. Although the basic structure still has the contemporary high end feel of the outside, it is decorated with whine barrel tables and stools along one wall as you walk past the bar to the dining area. There are roughhewn wood beams a third way down from the high industrial looking ceilings, which although incongruous with the contemporary exterior architecture and the almost factory feel of the ceiling has a settling effect on those under dressed nerves. If the décor can’t decide what to wear, why should we worry?

Modern Food

That incongruity may be the thing that makes it work. The food can’t quite decide either. It is modern, with items like peach and pistachio flatbread, fettuccine carbonara made with smoked chicken instead of the traditional bacon and stuffed artichoke as main course. Yet it is also traditional in its ingredients, relying on locally sourced and grown items from area farms. The local rustic wine barrels, in a contemporary envelope if you will.

Rustic Chips

My oldest son is a vegetarian so we started off with an appetizer we could all share, the rustic chips, which are described as crispy root vegetables and dip. They basically tasted like good potato chips, with a choice of two sauces, one with a nice spicy kick and the second with a cooling slightly dill taste. Dip one in spice and a second in the cooling dip to calm down your mouth, all the time enjoying both. My youngest son, not opposed to meat had the bison burger, cooked medium rare, with fries. The burger was cooked well, and tasted like bison, which in my opinion is boring. The fries were nuggets versus strings, and they were loaded with flavor. I was tempted to order a side for the table to share, because it was my son’s birthday after all and I wanted them content. Ok, I wanted more fries, but the other sounded good, didn’t it?

Fettuccine Carbonara

I had the Fettuccine Carbonara. As I mentioned earlier this was a very different Carbonara, with smoked chicken, along with the bacon, snap peas and their house made pasta. This was very tasty, but I think I prefer the traditional with pancetta. Still a very good dish, just maybe not really Carbonara.

Vegetarian Delight

This brings me to my oldest son’s dish, the vegetarian. Now as a confirmed meat lover, I think there should be a rule against being out ordered by a vegetarian. It seems like I am letting down all the carnivore connoisseurs out there. After this I may have to turn in my meat card. Because he had the best dish of the night. He got the peach and pistachio flatbread. This was so much better than my dish, and mine was good. Needless to say, it was much, much better than the bison burger that my other son got. This was good enough to make me want to swear off all the sausage and mushroom pizzas, meatball, onion and garlic pizzas, and dare I say, Italian Bomb pizzas I have ordered over the years. After taking a bite of this I gave up the idea of ordering French fries for the table to be a good father and immediately thought of ordering another one of these pizzas for us all to share. But my kids, would have none of my kindness saying they were too full and if they had that they couldn’t have dessert. Damn them, for me not getting more of that flatbread, umm I mean for them not letting me spread my generosity upon them.

Dessert

So instead of the flatbread we had dessert. My youngest had the flourless chocolate brownie which had a deep rich chocolate flavor that matched well with the vanilla ice cream, that Ken would have been proud of. The Peanut Butter Bucket was everything its name implied a sweet smooth mousse of peanut butter with plenty of whipped cream, and the hummingbird cake which had kiwi, guava, mango, coconut and cream cheese frosting, but tasted mainly like a moist carrot cake, despite its list of ingredients. They were all very tasty desserts, but somehow, they didn’t match up to that one bite of flatbread and the many more that I could have had if my sons would have just been more willing to accept my magnanimous gesture.

Good Bar

In addition, to the delicious food, they have a very good bar. That night they had several drinks that sounded wonderful including a watermelon margarita. But that was overwhelmed by a couple of unique draft beer options, a peanut butter porter, that was fantastic and a hazelnut imperial stout, that was better than fantastic, where the hell is my thesaurus when I need it.

Worth the Trek

The Beamhouse did everything well. There were no misses from the knowledgeable waiter, to the great drink selection, to the unique appetizers, to the flatbread that could make being a vegetarian appealing, to the main courses, to the desserts. If you are trekking east of the river, The Beamhouse is a good place to trek to.