Norse Brewing Company — Restaurant in Wake Forest

We decided to try Norse Brewing Company recently for dinner.

We found it OK the location was nice parking was not an issue.

I appreciated the interior and place had a nice feel and a variety of seating options inside and out.

The Hostess and Waitress were attentive and polite.

I ordered the Astrid’s Amber Ale an American Red. the ale was cloudy which was unexpected for this style but whatever, The Astrid’s did not taste like any American Red I’d had, so much in fact that I thought perhaps I received the wrong beer. Seems this was not the case. The temperature of the beer was unacceptable, not much cooler than room temp and certainly nowhere near cold. Although I was not a fan of this beer the Norse Brewing company is very proud of it,

We ordered a starter, the soft pretzel. I was recently another local brewery and they had a soft pretzel that was comically large I was 100% sure this would be similar and pretty excited. What came out caused me and my wife to actually laugh out loud. This was a standard if not on the small side soft pretzel!!!

Not discouraged I ordered another beer this time the Fifth Wheel Pale Ale. This was a much better beer than the Astrid’s but no colder.

The menu is an interesting mix of normal pubfare as well as unusual Viking/Norse inspired dishes with challenging names and interesting ingredients. Like the beer food prices seem a bit steep for the venue and location. Based on the beer and the pretzel expectations are not high at this point. We ordered more “normal” foods veering away from anything too exotic. One dish was the Roasted Chicken which indicated it comes with “Airline” chicken. This was amazingly accurate considering how dry and tough the chicken was. The highlight of this dish was the green beans followed by the garlic mashed potatoes. Another member of our party had a cheese burger and fries which was good and reasonably priced, The waitress never asked what temperature we wanted the burger cooked to and it was a bit overcooked but not too terrible.

The fries and tots were fresh and crispy, with the exception of the airline-dry chicken nothing was terrible but nothing was particularly note-worthy.

While we were not interested in the more unusual dishes we enjoy Mead and assumed there would be an extensive menu considering the theme. This is nice because often a bottle of Mead can be a bit pricey so its nice to try smaller quantities when available rather than purchase a 750mL bottle of something you end up not liking. Well we were once again let down by a Mead choice of 1! Mead is far easier to make than Beer and yet they had only 1 option of a non in-house Mead.

I don’t think we’ll be going back or recommending The Norse Brewing Company to friends.

There is great potential but currently they are not there.

Improvements:

-Beer Prices, You’re making it there don’t be greedy -Beer Temperature needs to be colder, Should be easy. -That weak pretzel is just crazy. -Reduce labor costs, there were a bunch of people in the kitchen standing around doing nothing. -Mead, Mead, Mead, make some in house, buy some, have flights. this would set you apart from the other breweries we have in the Triangle. -Reduce the menu and focus on quality, I doubt Radish Toast is a big seller anyway.

Good luck to you and I look forward to coming back in the future to see what’s changed if...

My party of 2 arrived at Norse at 7pm last night and sat on the patio out front. Our server was phenomenal, attentive and friendly. Unfortunately I forgot her name but a young lady with brown curly hair. She's the reason for my 4 star review. The food leaves something to be desired at Norse. Now Norse means "Norwegian" so I was expecting Norwegian inspired dishes - reindeer, shrimp, salmon. There was also a some Danish inspired dishes on the menu and a Danish flag hanging inside. Having lived in Denmark this got me excited. I didn't really see anything that struck my fancy but ordered the Danish fried chicken sandwich with fries and a grapefruit cocktail. Though the meal was not authentic the prices were VERY Danish. A cocktail, chicken sandwich, and a dessert set me back $38 not including tip. I would venture to say it was even more expensive than Denmark! But at least in Denmark, I get a high quality meal that I can write home about. This was not that. The fried chicken was dripping in grease and the meat inside was dry and tough to eat. The grapefruit cocktail was very good. And the brown butter cake for dessert was ok. My recommendations for menu improvements are as follows. Look up BRUS in Copenhagen their menu is full of great bar snacks and unique flavors that can compliment a good beer selection. Denmark is the number one pork producer in Europe and so is NC so getting more pork forward items on the menu should be first priority. Crackling, pork tenderloin, bacon wrapped anything and the most famous Danish dish, flæskesteg sandwich. Smørrebrød is alright and it is authentic, but I can tell you right now no American will eat that willing as a dinner meal. Make Smørrebrød an app instead like a sampler if you will. And the viking potato salad (which is German according to the menu?! ) should be new potatoes with a parsley cream sauce. Fries need to be thicker and fresh cut. I would have ordered the frikadella but the goat cheese sauce turned me off, stick with gravy. Overall I would go here for a drink maybe an app and take my dinner plans elsewhere. But with menu improvements with more authentic dishes you can't get anywhere else, I'd venture...

We stopped by last night for the first time and really enjoyed the beers especially the CranMerry Sour. The radish toast was great too (the asparagus was out, but we heard good things) We told our family about it and wanted to stop by today for a couple beers and get some toast to go so they could try it. Our bartender was very attentive and friendly. Only issue was the manager.. we got there around 2:00-2:30 and immediately asked our bartender when would be a good time to order the toast so we wouldn’t be keeping the kitchen and the server said anytime up until 4:00 pm (closing) At 3:30 the manager (guy in red flannel) came by and didn’t ask how we were, just abruptly informed us that they were closing at 4:00 pm and if we wanted anything else we needed to order. We mentioned ordering the food to go and he said the kitchen “actually closed an hour ago” and we said that our server had told us different but we weren’t trying to keep them late. He put a hand up to us and said “it’s fine, I’ll put it in” which I felt was rude. Really disappointing punctuation to an otherwise great experience with them. I get no one wants to work on Christmas Eve, but we were sensitive to when they were closing and tried to be easy guests. I definitely didn’t feel welcomed after that. It was very obvious he was trying to usher us out so they could close as soon as possible. Understandable, but we were far from the only people there and if he was in that much of a hurry he could have mentioned the kitchen would be closing early when we arrived (which apparently it wasn’t). Normally I wouldn’t say anything but seems like a great place and they’ll lose business being represented by a passive aggressive, mercurial manager...