After hosting food trucks for the last couple years to serve imbibing patrons, Diamondback Brewing Company is unveiling a new food menu centered around pizzas made in-house and using some staff-made ingredients.
The McHenry Row taproom’s new food menu, already posted online, will debut next Wednesday afternoon. Options include four oven-fired pizzas ($9-11), Bavarian pretzels ($4) that can be topped with a house-made cheese blend or Nutella (each $2), and, for group snacking, a charcuterie board ($15) with prosciutto and chorizo and a mix of cheeses, nuts and dried fruits.
The brewery will offer counter service, meaning customers can order at the bar and get a number, and staff will deliver the food at their table.
All pizzas and pretzels will use dough handmade by bartender and baker Cassidy Johnson, and the sauce used for the pies comes from a recipe honed by taproom manager Ryan Belton. He’s also blending the cheeses, which come from The Great Cheese shop in Southwest Baltimore, co-founder Colin Marshall said.
Working together, Johnson and Belton have “really kind of spearheaded this program,” added Marshall, who’s tested the pizza himself and is now excited for customers to give it a try.
Based out of McHenry Row since 2016, Diamondback has hosted a rotation of food trucks over the last several years to fill the bellies of its customers.
But Marshall said that hasn’t allowed for much consistency with the cuisine, and oftentimes isn’t even a good deal for the chefs who come through.
“The food trucks were awesome, but it was just inconsistent,” he said, adding, “A lot of the time we did just fine, but the food trucks fell short of what they needed to make.”
After some discussion, Diamondback’s investors decided to make use of a small area in the taproom and put together a tiny, 60-square-foot prep area and kitchen.
“The whole prep area is probably built for one and a half people, but it’s gonna have to work for two,” Marshall said half-jokingly.
The kitchen sports a Turbo Chef oven, which heats up to 700 degrees and is specifically made for pizza cooking, Marshall said. It’ll be capable of putting out a pie every two minutes, or roughly 30 pizzas an hour.
The kitchen and food menu additions mark a new step for the brewery, which opened at McHenry Row in November 2016 after a couple years spent contract brewing out of a facility in Virginia.
“It’s a really good evolution for us,” Marshall said.
