Enter a maze of beer and food

“We accomplished our primary task, which was to have as many tap rooms as we can in one place,” says Juan Carlos Bucio, the mastermind that turned Plaza del Balazo into Plaza Cerveza. “The second stage of the Plaza is to add more restaurants and diversity.”

Vacancies in Plaza Fiesta are filling rapidly. It seems that every week one place closes but three others open. Similar to tap rooms that keep the name of the previous bar on the front but adopt the name of the brewery inside, these restaurants are doing the same. Inside of El Tigre you find Ludica’s tap room and Sinful Eats kitchen, and the bathroom is connected to Ramuri, which used to be Black Sheep and hosts a different kitchen that has a grill inside the hood of half of a VW Bug.

Confused? Plaza Fiesta is an ever-changing maze of craft beer and food that can be very bad or surprisingly good. The price, however, is unbeatable. As long as there are new places to cover, I will keep exploring the maze. This week, Lazy Pig inside Big Bad Brewing (3B).

The Reader photography team was down in Tijuana for the Reader’s recent beer cover story. We were pretty buzzed as we were wrapping up the shoot before heading back to the border. Our last stop was 3B, which recently partnered with Lazy Pig’s kitchen and chef Enrique Chamor.

3B is located on the north end of the plaza, next to Pequeño Saigon (Vietnamese Restaurant), behind Sotano Suizo, and across from Mamut’s tap room. Since the beer is brewed in Mexicali, the place is decorated with art by Chicali locals Rod Villa and Star27. “Y la dieta?” is written in chalk near the kitchen.

Lazy Pig is for those who want to overindulge in greasy bar food, the ultimate complement to beer. In the spirit of sobering up before crossing international lines, we ordered a lot of food. Between four people we ordered Stout Onion Rings ($2.25), Bacon Buffalo Fries ($4.25), an elote ($2), a grilled cheese ($4.25), a Lazy Dog ($4.25), and a pulled pork sandwich ($4.25) for a total of $21.25. The last three dishes all came with a side of fries.

The Lazy Dog was my favorite, an oversized Polish sausage in artisan bread topped with chili, caramelized onions, and jalapeños. The photographer favored the elote covered in butter, sour cream, powdered chile, and lemon juice (he has a thing for Mexican corn on a cob).

The grilled cheese was a blend of three cheeses, not at all the level of Grater but well worth the price. The unpeeled potato fries were greasy, cheesy, and delicious. The pulled pork sandwich was dull, lacking a good BBQ or any other sort of spicy punch. The stout onion rings came near the end, and we were too full to appreciate them.

The only thing that Lazy Dog has going against it is that Plaza Fiesta already has too many places that serve the same food at similar prices. 3B had a difficult time when they opened, but a couple of creative maneuvers turned the place around. On Wednesdays you can flip a coin after your first pint, and if you win, the second pint is half-off. On May 4, if you showed up with a Star Wars shirt you got a free half pint. And they just started doing theme trivias (the first one was The Simpsons) — the winning team does not pay for their entire beer tab.