Roll Out the Barrel

I don't remember much about the smoked chicken and grilled corn quesadillas, nor the goat cheese, artichoke and spinach dip. Steamed mussels, bathed in a beer broth dotted with bacon, garlic, tomatoes and onions, were ordinary in flavor and texture; the perkiness of the tomatoes was its most memorable feature. I salute the kitchen for including both rings and tentacles in the tempura-fried calamari, but the dish itself left a dim impression on the palate. A platter of nachos decorated with a sprightly corn salsa and confetti-like crumbles of sweet Chihuahua cheese was brought down by burnt chunks of flank steak, relegating that appetizer to the worst of the bunch.

An entrée of smoked salmon fettuccine, accented nicely with bacon and tossed in a substantial chipotle cream sauce that ranked maybe a tick higher on the spicy scale than that Cajun remoulade, was average. I really wanted to love the mahi-mahi tacos, dressed up with more of that corn salsa, and the pumpkin seed-encrusted mahi-mahi fillet, finished with a chipotle tarragon cream nearly identical to the grouper's remoulade and the fettuccini's chipotle sauce. But I've had more memorable fish tacos (Salina's in Chesterfield sets the standard as far as I'm concerned), and I've had breaded fish fillets with far more character than this pumpkin-seeded one. In fact, its side of dill-spiked mashed potatoes stole any thunder the entrée might have offered.

If Square One's hooch evokes one's sense of adventure (and in Julie's case, a supplementary sense of inebriation), the food, alas, does not. But if this brewpub isn't the Golden Ticket to gastronomic Valhalla, it's a welcome entrée into a yeasty, foam-capped oasis.