Critic's Review
Review 9/25/2016
I have streaming Sunday Ticket this year, so I don't have to drag myself out to watch Giants games anymore. Brass Tap is nearby, so I thought I'd stop in for the late games and see what's changed, if anything.
The experience starts off with the incompetently designed roadway behind the bar. There are always trucks or something parked creating a hazard; today it was a bus.
A fantastic valet area, where you can't get anywhere near the valet. There's a "free" parking garage with a handful of spaces for the "retail"; luckily half of the businesses are closed on Sunday. I'm excited to see a couple of spots; oh drat, they're for "take out only" for Mellow Mushroom.
I was lucky as I saw some backup lights come on, so I maneuvered to get leverage to get the spot. It's a disastrous one-way garage that isn't clear it's one-way when you're inside, so it's a lot like bumper cars.
I thought about poking my head into the Mellow Mushroom, but there was nobody there. 2 guys at the back bar and a couple inside. Decided to pass on the Mushroom. What a disappointment that place is.
The patio here is just a disaster. All of the Las Olas wannabes who live in this complex hanging out with their dogs; more like a doggie park than a restaurant complex. I like dogs but I don't want to hang out with them at restaurants and bars. People who can't leave their dogs for an hour need to spend some time on The Couch.
The place is loaded with Brown's fans, because this is the bar they've chosen as their official bar. Their previous official bar was Taps in Himmarshee; apparently Browns fans have as much talent in selecting bars as their team does selecting quarterbacks. I found a Giants and Dolphins fan in the corner; Browns fans are too sad for me.
They have good 65" TVs at the bar. It took a while for a bartender to come over. I'd checked the beer menu so I know what they're supposed to have. The following unbelievable exchange came next"
Me: "Corona Light Please"
Crusty Barkeep: "I don't have any Coronas".
Me "Ok, I'll have a bud light."
Crusty Barkeep Snaps: "We're out of everything"
*Working Hard to Suppress all-out laughter*
Me: "What do you have that's light"
Crusty Barkeep: "Yuengling".
Me: "That's not light Beer"
Crusty Barkeep: "That's the lightest beer I have"
Me: "Ok, I'll have a Yuengling"
She then proceeded to short change me, giving me $14 change for a $20 bill for a $5.30 sale.
100s of beers but they're out of everything. What a concept.
I hung out for as long as it took me to drink a beer. Upstairs is a total disaster; there was a guy sleeping on some bench seating, and they've put some barrels by the rail which has the best view in the place of the bar.
The Giants guy turned out to have grown up about a mile from me on Long Island, in different decades however. I won a beer on a "how big are the TVs bet", but I declined and headed home after 1. I couldn't wait to get out of this place.
Conclusion
In a year, the brass tap is the same poorly run, insulting venue that it was last year. It wouldn't be fair to call this the worst bar in Fort Lauderdale, because there are so many bars that I've never been to. But I can say that this is the worst bar I've been to in Fort Lauderdale, without hesitation.
The food menu is a joke; bad bar food by people who know nothing about food. They've added a wedge salad with roasted corn and battered onions. Do you usually ask for blue cheese with your onion rings?
This is a franchise operation, where a franchise is a way to extract money from people by getting them to invest in your bad idea. The Brass Tap is a bad idea.
Review 10/11/15
With the NY Giants playing on Sunday night, I had no must see game to watch. Atlanta-Redskins was on TV, so that and the Eagles game were really the only games I cared about. I thought about checking out a distant sports bar for a change, but I didn't feel like driving 1/2 hour and blowing my whole afternoon. So I decided to check out The Brass Tap.
As we all know, the big issue with this place and the Mellow Mushroom is the parking. While there is a garage, if you don't like bumper cars (or if you don't have rubber bumpers on your car) you may try to find street parking first. On a Tuesday at 2:30 I can usually find something on a side street, but not at 3pm on an NFL Sunday. I figured I'd take a quick run through the garage before giving up.
I got lucky, as a car on the ground floor was just leaving as I entered the garage. It looks like all of the ground floor parking is for "retail"; there are signs on the wall claiming that the spot is reserved for retail and they'll tow you otherwise. How do they know if you're in one of the restaurants or just visiting someone in the building?
Approaching from the rear, the first thing you see is the outside space; like a sidewalk with bad patio furniture. Kids, dogs. The ball cap crowd abounds.
I entered through the door near US1 to a very uninspiring room. It's off to the side, dark and dreary. Who would want to dine in this room?
Compare this to the 
The bar area is narrow with 4 big TVs. For some reason the decor is distressed rather than bright and shiny; a place named the Brass Tap should be bright and shiny.
The beer menu is ridiculous; they have a 2 sided menu filled with choices; draft on one side and bottles on the other. I don't trust these guys to be able to maintain a tap system like this, so I was getting a bottle. I also wasn't paying $11 for a beer I likely wouldn't like. They don't have the prices on their web site so I'm not putting up the beer menus. I settled on the Highland Gaelic Ale for $6; 5.8% alcohol (Woo Hoo).
My busty server didn't know the menu; how could you know 92 bottled beers? She had to find some sort of referral sheet to figure out where to find the bottle, and then she struggled to enter it into the POS. You can't have buttons for 150 beers. She had to check the menu price; the whole operation is really smooth. One of the biggest mistakes restaurants make is that they try to be everything to everyone and create unmanageable menus. I don't even know if you can get a glass of wine here.
The beer was fine. It tasted like beer.
This is a short-change bar; not a good start for a new venue. My beer was $6.36 and I got $13 change from a $20. So the bartender kept 64 cents, more than 10%, for herself. My policy is that when I get short-changed more than a few pennies, I don't leave any additional tip. I encourage everyone else to adopt that policy as well to discourage this insulting practice.
There's a second floor on the place; up the stairs to a narrow area with some interesting taps in the back.
Apparently they're going to have some sort of self service thing going on at some point similar to the gimmick that American Social had with taps on the wall. This whole thing with craft beer and 20-somethings is really kind of nutty. The strategy is to get a buzz people. Paying $6 - $11 for a beer in order to convince yourself that you're some sort of connoisseur just makes you a tool to marketing.
The decor upstairs is equally as dreary. There's a strange area in the back with some couch sections; it reminded me of the upstairs at Rare Steakhouse when it first opened; just not nearly as nice. They could have made this a lot nicer all around with a bit of effort.
The view from upstairs is kind of cool if not useless. It's the only thing worth going up the stairs for.
Check out the table in the back; how do you land that prime spot?
I hit the men's room when I want back down and I was surprised at how old it looked. The stall doors didn't even close; we all know that this is a brand new build out. Why they wanted to make it look like a 20 year old bar is a mystery, particularly considering the bright, modern pre-construction renditions.
I hung out at the bar with a couple of Eagles fans; I have a rooting interest against the Eagles but they won easily. I saw some food come out and I had to keep from snickering. This place is a faux "gastropub" with an obviously contrived menu created by people who probably learned everything they know about Food at a US Foods show. "Peppadew" is a marketing brand of piquant peppers that come in a jar; it's something that doesn't belong on any menu unless they're stuffed with chorizo and manchego cheese; maybe. The menu here is wrought with "peppadew", "chipotle" and "sriracha"; it's easily the most ridiculous menu in the entire city. I have no intention of ever eating here.
All of the food that came out, including the pretzels, looked just as I suspected they would; like fast food.
One thing to know is that this is the new Cleveland Browns bar; last year's venue, Taps, is out of business, so for some reason they decided on this place. I asked some people why, but they couldn't say.
The big problem here is that they don't have enough TVs to show all of the games; The Redskins game wasn't on any Set. Plus, with all of the Browns fans, 2 of the 4 sets at the bar were on the Browns game, as was one of the 2 sets on the Patio. So there were only 3 different games you could watch in the bar area.
One beer and back to the garage. I got home in time to see the Redskins vs Falcons overtime, which I wouldn't have been able to watch at the bar, because it wasn't on.
Conclusion
I can't express how much is don't like this venue. I don't like the layout, I don't like the decor, and I don't like the way the TVs are managed. The way it's set up, it's like a bar in the side of a building. The inside space stinks; I couldn't see sitting at a table here even to watch a game.
This place is like a bad copy of Yard House, without the big space, good music or extensive, well constructed menu.
This place is going to be a watering hole for residents of the nearby apartments and that's it. Nobody is going to come here for lunch. Nobody is going to come here for dinner. And nobody is going to go out of there way to come here to watch sports, unless you're a Cleveland Browns fan.
Browns fans may have chosen another loser; with this menu and these prices this venue is a real stinker.
See, I think that's just how it's been marketed down here in South Florida. Elsewhere, you can get a great locally-made beer for $3-5 and not be blasted by EDM and backward-capped fools. It's not a craft beer problem, it's a Florida problem.
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