First Look: Lakewood Brewing Gets a Kitchen

Lakewood Brewing has long been one of our favorite beer destinations in Dallas. In addition to its first lady of local craft beer, The Temptress, it offers a well-rounded mix of beers from its lager to special releases, including many variations of The Temptress.

In the early years at Lakewood Brewing, drinkers packed into a tasting room where they couldn't buy a full pint or any beer to go due to archaic and nonsensical state laws. Thankfully, things have progressed, on that front anyway.

This year Lakewood is celebrating a decade in business and has gifted itself with some nice renovations. In addition to a large remodeled indoor and outdoor beirgarten, the brewery has added a kitchen. We recently visited to get a taste of things.
There’s liberal use of the house beers throughout the menu, like a lager cheese, a lager barbecue sauce and a Temptress reduction, all imparting not only style but also more nuanced flavors into dishes.

The menu has four simple sections — appetizers, salads, sandwiches and flatbreads — with a handful of options in each. It's a good mix of both indulgent and healthy options.

One of the highlights of the menu is that Lakewood partners with nearby Intrinsic Smokehouse & Brewery, which provides the brisket for some dishes. Unfortunately, there was no brisket the day we visited. Big fat sad face, but more reason to visit again. There's a quarter-pound smoked brisket sandwich with beer pickles and Sriracha slaw on a brioche bun for $15 that we're anxious to try.

There’s also a Smokehouse Flatbread with that same brisket, mozzarella and a house-made lager barbecue sauce ($17).
We started with chips and the jalapeño-lager beer cheese ($10). This doesn't pack much heat, despite a name that may suggest otherwise. It leans more toward a beer cheese than the typical queso you might find around Dallas, which is all well and fine. It's a nice snack while sipping beer.
A Bavarian pretzel ($8) is served warm with two sides for dipping: a Tangerine Queen pub cheese and a house-made Temptress mustard. We learned that the pretzels are not made in-house — could have fooled us. They're brushed with a house-made roasted garlic oil and sea salt after heating. The smell and warmth along with the airy dough inside is a woke carb dream and was the first thing finished at the table.

We also tried a flatbread topped with fig preserves, an herbed local chevre and arugula over a thin layer of Temptress reduction ($15). This was the most interesting of the foods we tried and great for sharing between several people. It is a bit sweet, but the flatbread had a great texture and the toppings were fresh and flavorful.

Lakewood has also refreshed its taproom with new booths and large communal tables with a lot of different seating areas throughout the brewery. Quite a few families with young kids (also known as babies) were taking advantage of the tables when we were visiting. As parents, we're not sure if we're sad we missed the bring-the-babies-to-the-brewery era or not. Good for them — we simply never attained that level of crowd control. (Extra kudos for the parents with the kids who did not have a screen in front of them and were quietly playing mancala.)
The outdoor area is a new and vast playland. There's plenty of shade, turf and different games for big kids and little ones, like foosball, cornhole and darts. A bright large mural on the side of the brewery is Instagram-ready.

Ten years in, the beer is still what we like the most. Now there's just a lot more space to enjoy it in, along with some food to soak it up.

Lakewood Brewing Co., 2302 Executive Drive, Garland, 3 p.m.– 9 p.m. Monday – Thursday; 11 a.m – 9 p.m. Friday – Saturday; 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. Sunday.