**Disclosure: I was invited in by Hop Tree Brewery. As always my opinions are 100% my own.***
Hop Tree Brewery invited us in to check out their food and restaurant. They are in Hudson, Ohio on Hudson Gate Dr. They are slightly off the main road and I would have never known they were located there. They are in a good size building and they have some land to work with as well, so there may be some additions in the future.
The building seats about 100 people. It has a dining area and a separate bar area with some couches and tables for people to just lounge. It is family friendly at dinner time and there were a couple families with children sitting in the dining area when we were there. The brewing area is located toward the back of the building and you can see it through some glass windows.
We sampled a couple of the beers and there was only one that we both didn’t agree on. Otherwise everything we tried was really good and we fought over who was finishing each of the samples. Our favorite of the day was the Sandlot Summer Ale. It was light and smooth and not too citrusy. If you like something more citrusy the Lemonade Stand is where it is at. It does taste like lemonade and I loved the citrus flavor. Bent Tree Brown had a light coffee taste. Even if you aren’t a coffee fan this one is a must try. They had a couple IPAs on their menu. I tried the From the Heart and the Crown of Bohemia. The From the Heart was a light beer with light grassy notes. My husband even said it was tolerable and he does not drink IPAs at all. The Crown of Bohemia was more hoppy than any of the other beers we tried. I still really enjoyed it but if hoppy is not your style beer I would skip this one. The last beer we tried was the Raspberry Kiss. Raspberry Kiss is dark in color but drinks like a light beer. They use no chocolate in this beer but it has great chocolate flavor and then a hint of raspberry at the end. I was such a fan of all of these beers.
Now on to the real reason we visited Hop Tree. The food!!! Their menu has everything from finger food to salads to sandwiches. They have monthly specials and weekly soup specials. We tried the Ruben and the Cubano. I really liked that the Ruben has house-made thousand island sauce on the sandwich and they didn’t skimp on the sauce. The corned beef was lean which was also a plus. The sandwich also had Swiss cheese and sauerkraut on grilled rye bread. You can pick the weekly specialty soup as a side with the sandwiches so we picked the soup, which was a crab bisque. The soup was creamy, had so much flavor and good size pieces of crab. I was super impressed that the soup is made fresh daily and it tasted like it was.
We also tried the Cubano, which had roasted pork and maple ham with Swiss, butter, mustard and pickles on grilled Cuban bread. Let me start by saying normally you get a sandwich like this and it has one or two pickles. Not at Hop Tree! I thought they put long pickles on the sandwich because there were pickles through out the whole sandwich. They are the round pickles not the long ones, but they just do it right, making sure there are pickles in every bite. This seriously made my day. The mustard really complemented the pork and ham with the Swiss cheese. We really liked this sandwich as well. The star of the show for me was the potato pancakes. My family has made homemade potato pancakes my whole life and I have to say I have never had ones that taste as good as Hop Tree. They are just fabulous. They are seasoned to perfection and they have great flavor. You honestly do not need the yogurt applesauce or sour cream. With that being said the yogurt applesauce is so good that the potato pancake doesn’t need it but you will want to use it.
We really enjoyed our drinks, dinner and the atmosphere at Hop Tree. Finding these gems that are harder to find in the Cleveland area and maybe not everyone knows about, is why I love writing this blog. There are rumors of some possible menu additions being added in the near future and I will make sure to check out those additions once they are added and let you know my thoughts. Until then you know I’ll be going back to try other sandwiches, specials and to get those yummy potato pancakes.