Another stop on my trip to Cincinnati found me at Christian Moerlein ,a brew pub located downtown across the street from the Reds stadium.  I really thought that this brew pub was an almost exact copy of a Gordon Biersch.  The atmosphere was similar, as was the menu.  Gordon Biersch has great garlic fries so I happened to notice that these were prominently placed on the menu here also.  We ordered the pretzel and beer cheese appetizer that was quite good, but how can you go wrong with beer and cheese? The cheese did not seem to be homemade or fresh– we joked that it was probably melted from a cheese like product.  I ordered the mussel appetizer as my meal. My first order had about 6 mussels that were missing so I was given a second order. The second order only had 4 missing mussels. I do appreciate that they tried to make it right by providing a second order, but this should not have been the case.  My friend got the spicy macaroni and cheese appetizer as her meal.  This was good but the spice overpowered the cheese; I would have named it spice with cheese and macaroni.

I really hoped that the beers would make up for the lack of creativity in the atmosphere and problems menu.  They did not.  The only beer that I enjoyed was the hefeweizen.  The other beers were lacking in flavor and not as full bodied as I hope from a craft beer. The Octoberfest was offered at the Brew Ha Ha and I found that to be a decent beer– too bad it wasn’t yet offered at the brew pub.

My advice– Gordon Biersch was first and has better beers, so just stick with them!