Though not nearly as elegant as Novare Res, Prost looks a lot better than the space used to look when it was Diggers. The fine-looking bar is concrete over plywood and juts out sharply in the back of the room to accommodate the 100 or so taps. (Full list of options available at erentertainment.net/prost/biers.html.) The rest of the room has a generic sports-bar feel. Unfortunately, a wood barrier obscures the view of the beers being poured. Customers focused their eyes instead on several channels of Olympics and sipped a Roman lager on special to celebrate some Italian victory in Bejing. That Peroni lager was a light and refreshing pilsner style — just a touch sour and bitter. A Canadian Unibroue Ephemere Apple had a hint of hops and a fruity sparkling quality that placed it somewhere between cider, champagne, and beer. Rogue Dead Guy Ale from Oregon was sweet for an IPA, and the Wolaver Organic from Vermont was light and bitter. While Prost had a good 30 foreign beers on tap, they had the local covered too with 11 beers from Maine. Samples are easy to come by.
Food is a bit of an afterthought at both spots, but Novare Res does a better job with less. None of their small plates involve any cooking, but they do offer some good cheeses, fat olives, cold sausage, oily almonds and pickled vegetables. Prost plans to make its menu “a little less German” soon. But they said they would keep the sausage, which came fat, juicy and a bit bland — in the German style — on a big pile of good mild sauerkraut. Since fat and bland looms in all of our futures, lets embrace it: Prost and Novare Res offer fine if distinctive ways to drink our way there.
Brian Duff can be reached atbduff@une.edu.
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