As I’ve mentioned in few of my upstate New York reviews, ever year I help operate the annual Ohana Luau at the Lake charity fundraising Tiki event. In addition to attending the event, we help with event logistics, and that means that at least twice a year we end up traveling to Lake George multiple time (usually once to stage everything, and then attend the event itself), and staying in the greater Lake George area several nights each June. Since we’re now in our 7th year of doing this, we’ve started to explore the area a bit more, and we’re starting to pick up a few favorites. One of these is about 15 minutes down the road in South Glens Falls, Common Roots.
Common Roots opened back in 2014 with a nice variety of beers, many of which use adjuncts, so it’s not unusual to find things like coconut porters, S’mores flavored stouts with vanilla, pineapple IPAs, or many fruited sours beers with interesting flavor combinations. But the brewery had a bit of a one-two punch a few years back: first, in 2019, they had a devastating fire that pretty much destroyed the brewery (indeed, our first ever visit to Common Roots was when they had a temporary tasting room in a warehouse two blocks away). They managed to assemble enough funding to build a giant replacement brewery with a nice outdoor beer garden… but it opened in March 2020, so due to Covid they spent the better part of a year doing take-out only. But since the Covid restrictions in NY got lifted, they’ve been really leveraging the updated brewery, brewing almost 12,000 barrels a year. And they’ve even managed to open a bierhall and cafe with additional brewing space across the parking lot, and a second taproom in Albany as well. But the flagship location remains an excellent spot to visit: a nice, large central taproom with large windows looking into the brewery. And on a nice summer day, their outdoor beer garden is a very inviting and comfortable outdoor space.
Any visit to a brewery, even if dining, focuses on the beer, and the beer at Common Roots is top notch. This time, my beer was from Common Roots’ “Tasteful Deception” fruited sour series, which has rotating selection of fruit adjuncts (in the past I’ve had some guava and raspberry variants of these). This one was blueberry and pomegranate, and was a particularly nice beer after a morning of schlepping boxes of stuff around the Tiki Resort.
But don’t overlook the food options at Common Roots. They offer substantially more than just “pub fare”, with a nice menu featuring a good array of starters, salads, wraps, pizzas and sandwiches. And they go a good job of making sure that the offerings are available that are vegetarian, vegan, and gluten free as well. To start off, we ordered some poutine, and were quite pleased with the results. The fries themselves were nicely executed, with a tender interior, good crisp, and light seasoning. While some places will use just shredded cheese (which turns a proper poutine into the less-satisfactory “disco fries”), these had proper, squeaky cheese curds. And the gravy, while vegetarian (making the entire dish vegetarian-friendly), was quite robust and flavorful. Overall, a commanding start to the meal.
For her main course, Carol opted for the Buffalo Chicken wrap. This was fried chicken bites tossed in Buffalo sauce (the same chicken bites were offered in quite a few places in the menu), mixed greens, pickled carrots, pickled red onions, bleu cheese crumbles, and lemon vinaigrette, all on a whole wheat wrap. This was quite good, although I found the chicken bits to be a little less tender than I usually care for. Adding in a surprisingly large and tasty bowl of tangy German-style potato salad, and this entire combination was $19… starting to get a bit pricey, but realistically, this was plenty enough food for two to share.
Myself, I went for the Brussels Bowl: Brussels sprouts, red bell peppers, crispy fried onions, house-made orange sauce, sesame seeds. I opted to have fried chicken bites as well (the same bites as Carol’s wrap) as well. This was a very nicely composed bowl with a generous amount of nicely-seared Brussels sprouts (not overly seasoned), complemented nicely by the peppers, onions, and sesame seed. The combination of the chicken and slightly-spicy orange sauce gave the resulting dish a pretty pleasant resemblance to General Tso’s Chicken, but slightly on the healthier side due to the bed of sprouts. I’d get this again, although I hope the next time the chicken bites are a bit more tender
Overall, Common Roots remains a favorite. The relatively new brewery and beer garden has a very nice, welcoming ambiance, the beer is top notch, the food good, and the service quite friendly. I can see why this is one of the Glens Falls area’s busier spots.
