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The sun sets on longtime Allston beer-and-nachos place

Boston Restaurant Talk reports Sunset Grill and Tap on Brighton Avenue has said adios to customers and closed its doors for good.

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Comments

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

I might cry.

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Me too.

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The beer selection is outstanding, but in the 4-6 times I've been, I've never had food better than mediocre. Maybe it's gotten better in the last 4 years, but it's no longer close to anywhere I find myself regularly, and my experience hasn't given me much reason to go out of my way to go there.

I get that beer is their strength, but if I'm going to sit and drink beer for a couple hours, I'd like some food to go with it. And the food needs to be on par with the beer.

I hope somebody takes over the space, keeps the 112 taps, and hires some killer kitchen staff. I'd make a special trip for that.

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From a Globe story in June of 2017:

Sunset Grill & Tap and its sister establishment Sunset Cantina were purchased from founder Marc Kadish in 2014 by Ara Balikian and longtime Boston restaurateur Marc Berkowitz, the brother of Legal Sea Foods president and CEO Roger Berkowitz.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/food-dining/2017/06/12/sunset-gril...

Marc Kadish was my roommate back in Allston in 1988 when he started the place. He was the perfect roommate...never home at night and asleep when I left for work and he always paid his bills in cash. He worked his ass off. Glad he was able to sell both places and not get dragged down with all this debt.

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:(

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that you'll have nowhere to go to to ask for one beer, then another, then another, for ten minutes until you find something on their menu they might actually have?
Does it suck that one more place serving disgusting, bland food at gourmet prices is closing?
Look on the bright side, maybe something decent will open there now, the location is great!

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There's still Tavern in the Square for bland, mediocre, overpriced tourist food!

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It was never about the food.

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But I probably haven't been there in 10 years. They were one of the first beer-centric bars in the area, but with so many places focusing on craft beers, making the trek out to Allston hasn't been necessary.

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I'm going to miss it immensely, even if I did go infrequently. I mean, what other locally owned options do you have that have that many beers on tap?

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Quantity != quality. Lines were often not cleaned. Had a bad Nightshift There years ago. Literally the only time I’ve ever order a beer I couldn’t drink. They wouldn’t exchange it. Better quality options out there. Try CBC or Slumbrews pub.

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In Allston alone you can get great beer at Lulus, Deep Ellum and Common Ground. Ten years ago this would have been terrible news for the Boston beer scene. Now there is good craft beer nearly everywhere so its less of a loss. Props to Sunset for being one of the first places to care about good beer.

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I hadn't been in much lately either. Had some great times there, but was always in a quandary when ordering beer from their massive selection.

Do I get something rare / new to try? That nobody else ever buys, meaning it might be skunky or stale? Or do I get a beer that moves more in sales, that everyone else is drinking?

Still, I hate to see a good place close. They had a pretty good run.

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It filled a great void in the 90s and early 00's when other Boston bars and restaurants hadn't caught up to the public's changing taste in beer. The staff was never very knowledgable though, the place looked like a dorm room, and half the time you'd order a beer only to find out 10 minutes later that they were out of it.

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Real bummer. Used to roll to Sunset with a huge crew after shows all the time before I was an old person.

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an undergraduate in this places glory days; I've lived here just a few years now as a GAM but in fact I always thought this place was repulsive and couldn't see what anyone liked about it

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I was introduced to the Sunset a little over ten years ago, and it was a great place to try some different beers. Since then, quality really slipped, and it was just easier for this South Side girl to go to The Penguin at Brigham Circle.

Now, where can I get a yard of beer in this town....

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I'm a 1990 MIT graduate and and I went to the Sunset many times after my undergrad days, usually for a once-a-week gathering of Kappa Sig alumni. Even though I come through that area often(because I regularly attend hockey games at Agganis Arena), I'd only been in there two or three times this decade. It's a student-heavy area and Tavern on the Square and the White Horse seem to draw the crowds. The bar I frequent most is T's Pub.

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Gordon Ramsey always goes to a restaurant he's fixing and starts off by telling them to reduce their menu to 5 items that they can do well. Most of those probably have decent menus but Ramsey wants them to do his recipes or change their concept. Sometimes he found one that seriously needed to do some editing.

Sunset was the latter. You went there if you wanted a few random beers. Or you went there if one person wanted ribs but another wanted a salad but the third person wanted nachos and the fourth person wanted a fluffernutter....but none of them wanted the best of any of those things.

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