One current local brewery trend has nothing to do with beer. Breweries tap a local restaurateur to provide quality eats for taproom customers while brewers concentrate on what they do best – beer. The latest of these collaborations is between Alpha Brewing Co. and Plantain Girl owner Mandy Estrella, who built a following for her Caribbean catering services and pop-up events.
As The Scoop reported in April, Alpha is currently constructing a new facility at 4310 Fyler Ave., slated to open in mid-February. In addition to a 15-barrel brew house, co-owner and head brewer Derrick Langeneckert said the new digs will also boast a taproom, restaurant and beer garden area with seating for approximately 300.
The restaurant, called Alpha-Teria, will feature Estrella’s signature Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican cuisine. The menu will include shareable plates like empanadas, pollo con queso and a rotating selection of tacos, along with mains like the ropa vieja plate (braised flank steak, white rice, black beans, maduros, pickled red onions and cilantro), and sandwiches like the tripleta with diced steak, pork, ham, Swiss cheese, grilled onions, lettuce and tomato on toasted French bread.
Langeneckert said he was looking for something different to complement Alpha’s variety of beers. “Our beers are more aggressively flavored,” he said. “We just didn’t want to do the typical hamburger or pizza, because the food would get really lost. We were looking for something spicy.”
Langeneckert happened to visit Six Mile Bridge Beer during one of Estrella’s pop-ups there, and the rest was history.
“We were getting to the point where we were already going to phase out the pop-ups,” Estrella said. “We were about two years out from opening some form of a Latin fast-casual restaurant, so when Derrick approached me with this, it wasn’t exactly what I was going to do, but was kind of the middle ground. I could open a kitchen without having to open a full restaurant. It seemed like a great opportunity with less risk.”
She said the built-in audience of Alpha fans was also an incentive, as well as the fact that many Plantain Girl followers are from the Tower Grove area, where the new Alpha location will be. Estrella said she’ll continue to cater under the Plantain Girl moniker.
Matt Sorrell is a staff writer at Sauce Magazine.
This article appears in November 2017.