Enter The Dragon

[March 12th, 2008]

The Green Dragon Ale House (928 SE 9th Ave., 517-0660) is a nice place to relax, kick off your shoes (figuratively) and play a game or two of darts. But on a recent Thursday night, it was not a place to, well, meet members of the opposite sex. Besides a few couples enjoying a pint and some European-style frites from the happy-hour menu, the place was dudesville: T-shirts, messy beards and a lot of those slightly annoying beer connoisseurs who scoff at you when you don’t recognize the ale on nitro. Part of that is obviously seasonal—located in a large, cavernous warehouse, the Dragon’s cold concrete floors and lonely upright piano don’t make for the most romantic setting. But once the sunlight comes in and the hoodies come off, things should change. The space is great for drinking in large groups, the selection—constantly rotating and all on tap—is totally top-notch and the food is better and slightly healthier than your average pub grub. It’s a little bit like drinking in your parents’ garage—only the ceilings are 30 feet high, the roof doesn’t leak, and instead of hiding the empty keg in the neighbors’ back yard, the owners have hung it on the wall as a piece of art. Like Mark Twain used to say, sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.