By now, the locals know all about the craft brew options at Tidal Creek Brewhouse.

From the Breezy Blonde to the Harmonic Hefeweizen, many of them are available not only in single serve glasses or flights at the restaurant, but also in four packs at many local grocery stores. Clearly, the business venture – launched at the beginning of the pandemic – has done well for itself.

Not to be overlooked is the food at its home base on the back side of Market Common. This open concept joint sprawls well outside its physical structure, past the parking lot and into an oversized yard, complete with a miniature dog park, outdoor games and plenty of seating.

Small bands and comedy acts and yoga classes and group runs all frequent that space – hey, all those things go with beer, right?

With all that going on, I can see why the grub is often playing second fiddle. Maybe it’s time for that part of the venture to at least get slightly higher billing. Because, after a fifth or sixth visit here (we lost count; hey, the first few were for drinks), I found a menu that packs as much of a punch as those beers.

In previous reviews, I’ve mentioned that my immediate family of five likes to dip and dive all over menus. We all sort of point and grunt and then swap plates. This time, we hit up Tidal Creek not only with our crew, but another family of four.

We cleaned up the grunting some to impress our friends, but the end result was the same.

The Driftwood charcuterie board was a must. As were a couple of the Coastal pretzels with cheese and mustard. Fries, yep. Ah, what the heck, snag some of the wings, too. There’s nine of us, right?

Each of the items is brought to the table as it is ready, which is good when you dine with a group of piranhas. Managing to avoid any significant finger damage in the process – and thanks to the fact that a few of them don’t have the refined palette of their father – I was able to partake. So far, so good.

The grilled buffalo wings were clean and popped with flavor, even without the extra breading of their fried cousins. The pretzels were awesome again – something we’d learned during prior stops when the beers got a little too easy to swallow. The charcuterie board was, well, awesome, even if we had to guess on the last of the three cheeses (it was chunked brie, we think).

From there, round two.

Tidal tacos.

We split them evenly between the chicken, pork belly and steak. Each of them topped its flower tortilla. None of them lasted very long.

Crab cakes.

We may have done this knowing the kids wouldn’t touch them. Our selfishness and love of fried green tomatoes paid off nicely. These suckers were good.

Kids, go play. We tossed in a second round of drinks for the adults and started thinking about what we could order next time to keep the kids at bay.