A few weeks back, my wife and I had a hankering to eat dinner out somewhere. Unable to decide between the few kid-friendly establishments we liked in the area, we put the question to our five-year-old son. His eyes lit up instantly and there was no equivocation in his decision.
“Let’s go to The Dirty Truth,” he said.
“Really?” we both asked, and then—though this beer hall on Main Street in Northampton is a favorite haunt for both of us—we proceeded to suggest alternatives. He would not be swayed.
Ever since it first opened five or so years ago, my excitement for The Dirty Truth hasn’t waned. Initially, it met my two requirements in a favored drinking establishment: it had an amazing, varied, and ever-changing selection of incredible beers from far and near (40 taps line the wall behind the runway-long bar), and instead of flat screen televisions everywhere you looked, there was art.
I liked the rows of long tables, and how, when the place got packed, you had no choice but to find an open stool and share a table and a drink communally with complete strangers. I liked the minimal signage out front and how—when I was sitting at the table nearest the door, watching the foot traffic outside—some of the out-of-towners would stumble over themselves as they passed by, trying to figure out what was going on inside. For a long time the only sign was a beer coaster haphazardly affixed to the beam of dark, polished wood above the windows outside. Seeing the name of the establishment scrawled on the coaster, the meek and anxious would scurry along, but the hip folks inevitably would peek inside for a look. Most lingered and left much later, pleasantly buzzed and deeply satisfied.
In its early days, though, not all was perfection. The restaurant that had occupied the space before The Dirty Truth had been some kind of metro-Euro-Japo-fusion fiasco that had taken nearly twice as long to open (the place seemed to be under construction for months) as it did to close. While the new owners were able to bring a more down-to-earth, German beer hall sensibility to the space, for a long time the ghost of an uptown, cosmopolitan, holier-than-thou attitude haunted the place. As excellent as the beer has always been, the food once was no more than glorified bar grub. Nachos, burgers, mac and cheese, and lanky, white fries were the staples, but all with haut cuisine prices. While many of the waitstaff were warm and inviting, on occasion you’d get some cool cucumber who seemed more interested in passing judgment on your choices than refilling your empty glass. The music, at times, could be obnoxiously loud and discordant with the laid-back mood.
Thankfully, these are distant memories, and I bring them up now only to provide evidence that this bar has managed what few establishments I’ve ever encountered have: they’ve changed—and keep changing—for the better.
On the specials menu last Friday, for instance, in addition to calamari or Maine-style crab cakes, one could also choose snails in parchment with garlic herb butter. That is, if the promise of bone marrow and truffled beef sliders (with truffled fries on the side) didn’t absorb your attention. The asterisk at the bottom of the chalkboard reminded you that for an additional five bucks, you could add foie gras to any burger. On the standard menu, in addition to beef burgers, you could get one made from lamb, and if those options didn’t appeal, why not indulge in a ribeye steak, or risotto, or a house-made pierogi? The fries, too, have improved. No longer anemic, they’re hand-cut every day, thick, with their crispy dark skins still attached. The prices are still similar to what they once were, but now the food is almost as dynamic and interesting as the beer, and it all seems like a deal.
While I was visiting the Dirty Truth to take the photos that accompany this profile, general manager Nathan Hobbs offered me a tour behind the scenes. As we passed the kitchen, on the way down to the basement, he beamed with pleasure at what his cooks had accomplished. He explained that he’d intentionally hired people without heaps of experience, but who were all eager to discover and prove their culinary abilities. Don, the cook who had taken on the challenge of offering a weekend brunch, Hobbs said, spent the weekdays perfecting his Hollandaise sauce.
Below, beyond the door marked “Employees Only,” Hobbs showed me the walk-in refrigerators packed with beer kegs, marinating pickles and freshly sliced fries, but what he took the greatest pride in was the apparatus that kept the many yards of beer lines refrigerated. Between the kegs below and the taps above, there was a complicated network of tubing carrying hundreds of dollars worth of beer to waiting glasses. To ensure that every drink was served up as fresh and chilled as possible, they’d invested in a system that never permitted the beer to get to room temperature.
The exception to this was his bottled beer vault, located next to his office deep below the Truth. In the small chamber, bottles lined the shelves and Hobbs spoke reverently of his collection, in particular the Belgian Lambics and Gueuzes, some of which are many years old, and like wines, get better with age. He told me of a recent trip to a European brewery where he learned how these beers were aged in oak casks, and he described the unique chemistry between the yeasts and the microflora found in the wood as a “sort of controlled infection.”
When asked about how he went about deciding on the 40 brews he had on-tap, he explained that, like everything else at his beer hall, it had been an evolution. “Just three years ago, when I called a distributor with my list of what I wanted, they’d tell me they’d see what they could do,” he said. “Sometimes I got what I was looking for; sometimes I didn’t.”
But by developing a relationship with distributors and brewers, he finds himself in the enviable position of having them contact him with news of what is coming. While he admits liking that he’s now “first in line,” he’s careful to note that he tries not to abuse his influence and completely deplete their resources of the good stuff. Good beer, he points out, ought to be shared, and while his thirsty customers are capable of cornering a market, he tries to only take his share.
This past weekend my son and I found ourselves at home without the car, and faced with a gray Sunday at home, we decided to make a trek into town for brunch at The Dirty Truth. After our long walk, the moment we entered, my boy recognized the song playing on their turntable (something from School House Rocks), and the friendly, familiar wait staff met us with smiles and tall glasses of ice water.
While we looked over the food and beer menus, our waiter answered my questions and offered samples of beers I was curious about, not minding at all that I ended up going with something I was already familiar with. As my Avery IPA and his Maine Root Beer arrived at the table, my son and I both felt reassured we’d made the right choice in how to start our day. He ordered the French toast with candied bacon, and I tried their Eggs Benedict.
As we sipped our drinks and waited for our food, I decided the reason we enjoyed The Dirty Truth equally had something to do with a new attitude that had grown there, also like a controlled infection, chasing out ghosts of the past. For all the emphasis on rare and wonderful flavors, there was no sense of elitism at the Truth. Egalitarian was the word that came to mind: here, everyone deserved the best.
And as I made handy work of devouring my eggs, I appreciated the time Don had spent perfecting his Hollandaise sauce. It was delicious, and its sweet tang went perfectly with the sharp bite of my bitter beer.
