Thirsty Monk Brewery & Pub

A highball with a lemon wedge and a pink cocktail garnished with two cherries sit at a window table, floor-to-ceiling glass opening behind them onto the sidewalk and a bare winter tree. The room is Thirsty Monk’s Biltmore Park pub, 2 Town Square Blvd, and the wall behind the tap line inside is shingled with brewery stickers — Founders, Great Lakes, dozens more layered over each other — with a trivia-night flyer taped above the bar that reads Tuesdays, 7:00 PM. Belgian imports share the taps with Thirsty Monk’s own beer; a bottle of Delirium Tremens, the pink-elephant Belgian strong ale, sits next to a plate of dessert at one table. Seven cocktails run the list, ten to twelve dollars. A French 75 takes sparkling wine over the top; a rye Manhattan takes a Luxardo cherry. The Moscow Mule and the Dark & Stormy are built the same way, vodka meeting ginger beer in one and blackstrap rum in the other, both finished with fresh lime, and the House Old Fashioned carries bourbon, turbinado sugar, orange and a double dose of bitters. Order one here and you are still ordering into a beer bar: seven cocktails against a long line of taps, fries and a folded flatbread coming out of the same kitchen. Monk’s Flask, the cocktail-and-wine bar that took the unit next door in December 2018, is where to go if the full list is the point.