The Best Deal in The Marina: The Brazen Head’s Maker’s Mark Mondays

Brazen Head’s classic interior

I’ll take the risk of repeating an oft-held position by opining that most of the time The Marina District richly deserves its crappy reputation.  Its main streets (Union, Chestnut, Fillmore) of a Friday or Saturday night are overrun with braying troglodytes with calf implants pawing at the ass implants of prospective mates with whom they hope to clog the world’s playgrounds with tiny copies of themselves: little solipsistic monuments to entitlement.

When I’m having a meal in The Marina it’s not at Betelnut, A16, The Tipsy Pig or any other of the well-known watering holes and feeding troughs of the upper crust (or those who aspire to said crust).  Nine times out of ten, I go to The Brazen Head, a glorious time capsule situated blessedly at a remove from the main action. When you walk in you can barely distinguish people or objects, illuminated as they are with the bare minimum of red light.  It has it’s own hazy, trapped-in-amber atmosphere; groups of aforementioned citizens doing a Marina barge will often stumble in, look around in a daze, and then instinctively either get into the spirit of the place, or back away fearfully and flee.

Together with the ambience, I go to Brazen Head for Makers Mark Mondays.  It’s got my vote for best fucking deal ever.  Here’s what it is: a pepper steak with all the fixings (whipped or baked potato, generously buttered sautéed cabbage and string beans, a basket of garlic bread), awe-inducing bread pudding with ice cream for dessert, and a Makers Mark Manhattan.  Jimmy behind the bar puts the check in front of you and it reads 20 dollars!  Some bartenders bottle and sell their artisanal farts for more money than that.

Sitting in this dimly-lit monument to old school virtue far from the jabbering crowd, a mild whiskey burn in the belly, I’ve often gazed into the mosaic swirl of blood streaming from the steak into the potatoes and imagined being written there: God Bless The Brazen Head.

Brazen Head
Makers Mark Mondays
3166 Buchanan St. (@Greenwich)
[Marina]