Barley Creek Brewing Company – Tannersville, PA

The Cowboy Burger is a ½ pound of Angus beef served with a heaping amount of cheddar cheese, frizzled onions and BBQ sauce. You can order your burger on a kaiser, chibatta, onion poppy or whole grain roll. I asked Michelle our waitress what she recommended and she suggested the onion poppy roll. Good call Michelle! The roll was excellent and having an onion roll paired with frizzled onions meant no mercy for the rest of my team. It's a good roll. Not to soft, definitely not to bready and yet strong enough not to fall apart.

As for the burger it was tasty but over cooked. I order medium rare but as you can see from the photo it was closer to medium well. It's to bad because the presentation and ingredients made it look very promising. Now before I totally bash the burger I was reminded by Robbie (The groups wing man and all around best man) that I should take into consideration that they were expediting food for 13 sausages (dudes). Dually noted but my review still stands for what I had.

The burger was dry and a bit under seasoned. It was semi bland and not to memorable. It's a shame because the amount of cheddar cheese melting off was fantastic. I'm also kind of a BBQ nut so I had it on the side to see how it stood up. There sauce had a great taste. Not to smokey and just the right amount of tang. I felt they went a little stingy on the frizzled onions but it would take a lot to compete with the onion roll.

If the burger was medium rare like ordered it and a bit more seasoned I feel like this would have received a 4.0. Instead for the taste I had to go with a 2 and it earned that 2 on it's roll, cheese and BBQ sauce.

At ten bucks I think this would have been a homerun. Even taking in the ingredients and composition of the burger I feel it was still worth $10 to make it a deal. Especially cause the fries were "out of the bag" and not fresh cut. I guess the $12 is to be expected because we're in a semi touristy. Still $10 would make this a great deal.

First off it came stacked and not open faced. That's an automatic check in the plus column. The square white plate, nice stacking of fries, burger and pickle along with the dusting of parsley was nice but what really made the plate stand out was the mound of melted cheddar pouring out of the overcooked ½ pound disappointment. It looked awesome! Seriously like the top of a roll and a stack of melted cheese. Nice job.

The fries were a good helping, warm to hot and very crispy but they had that batter shit on them that I hate. A place like this should go fresh cut. You're a brewery and you had some killer apps. There is no reason why you can't go fresh cut and well seasoned on the fries. I could see paying $14 for well seasoned medium rare burger over flowing with cheddar cheese and FRESH cut fries.

The brewery/restaurant was the best part of the experience. When we arrived we were given a tour. It's always cool to learn about the process but even better was the tasting we had after. Small glasses and carafes were passed around with samples of all the house-brewed beers. My favorite was the IPA. No big surprise since that's all I seem to order anymore. I thought there was definitely some good beer to be had at Barley Creek. I'm not an expert nor do I pretend to be one (my partners will tell you that) but taste wise it seemed to be up there with other popular micro brews I have learned to enjoy.

Another note was the service. Our waitress Michelle was spot on when handling 13 rowdy dudes at a table. She put up with our repeated requests of icing the bachelor, countless desires for beverages and over all obnoxiousness. Everyone else there was also really cool.