Hopyard - old faithful

When working at one place for many years in a row you end up eating at the same places over and over.  It could be called a rut.  With that in mind in order to expand my eating horizons I have decided to eat lunch at every restaurant in the San Ramon Market Place.

We begin with Hopyard.  Hopyard is a brew pub which is what originally drew me to it.  This is one of the standbys at my firm.  I would say I have been here for lunch in the neighborhood of 500 times.  You would think that with that many lunches I could give an in depth review of the menu, but the first 300 visits I ordered a Patty Melt with a turkey burger and a side salad instead of fries.  I finally stopped ordering this when they started calling it a turkey burger with a patty melt set up.  This cost $1.75 more.  I also discovered that the swiss cheese was really american swiss cheese, which I am not even sure is really cheese.

For the past 200 times I have switched my order to the Barbecue Chicken Salad.  This comes standard with deep fried chicken, honey mustard dressing and barbecue sauce.  I modify this a bit with grilled chicken, oil and vinegar and no barbecue sauce.  Not sure why barbecue sauce and dressing go together.  In fact when I take a close look at the barbecue sauce it appears to have white bubbles, which makes me wonder whether or not it is refridgerated properly.  Also there is probably tons of sugar and liquid smoke in the sauce.  My rule of thumb is to avoid things with liquid smoke.

The other standard order is iced tea.  The iced tea comes with free refills, and depending on the waiter/waitress that can mean up to five pints a lunch.  By my calculation I have had 180 gallons of the Hopyard iced tea.  

The usual Hopyard crowd is John, Lori, Bill and Mark.  

Here is John and Lori enjoying the Hopyard experience.  I think they are distracted by the guy at the bar wearing man  Capri's.  He is also one of the waiters, who is very fast getting you your food but slow at getting you the bill.  I think it has to do with the Capri's.

Here is Bill, he tends to order things without any special changes.  Can't figure out why he needs to read the menu after 500 Hopyard visits.  He is just special that way.

The other great thing about Hopyard is that 99% of the time we see Steve Kerr.  He is almost always there with a different person.  John (who went to Arizona and thus loves Steve Kerr) and I can't figure out how he commutes back and forth from Phoenix and San Ramon.  I would think that he would want the Warriors GM job which would make the commute to Hopyard that much easier.

All and all Hopyard is a must if you visit San Ramon Marketplace.