The Glass is Half Empty…

San Marcos

By Ryan Delaney

Anyone who knows me understands that I have a great and terrible hatred of San Marcos. Various vitriolic late night rants I have conducted to any poor sap willing to listen to me usually include such points as: “a college town where the bars CLOSE AT 12:00??? What the fuck? What am I doing here? Every time I go to a party it gets busted within 15 minutes, it’s like fucking clockwork”. You get the idea. Having spent 6 of my more formidable years in the horrible fun vacuum that is San Marcos has actually allowed me to form a great appreciation of the few things in San Marcos that are good. One of those things is The Tap Room, which is located just off of “the square”, a god awful collection of hideous college bars. Ah, The Tap Room. Anyone who has spent considerable time in San Marcos will more than likely start salivating and recollecting fond drunken memories at the mention of the place. Why all of the hyperbole, you ask? Could it possibly be justified? The answer is a resounding yes.

A testament to the high quality pub food and great beer selection is the fact that The Tap Room is almost always crowded. It would be wise to arrive before 8:00 to have your best shot at securing a table with no wait, and it can become very cramped when the evening crowd rushes in to get their fix. The Tap Room is small with plenty of large flat screen televisions on the walls and you always have a view of the game from any table in the room. The Tap Room serves pub food, and they serve it well. The menu is your standard pub fare: hamburgers, wings, ribs, various fried vegetables, etc. My absolute favorite is the baby back ribs. The ribs are so tender that the meat practically launches off of the bone. The smoky flavor and sauce are delicious and the ribs melt in your mouth. The hamburgers are monsters, perfectly cooked, and served on surprisingly sweet and outrageously delicious buns. The menu offers a wide variety of specialty burgers, but I usually stick to the mushroom swiss burger, topped with a very generous amount of fresh mushrooms and tasty melted swiss cheese. The burgers are accompanied by a massive pile of French fries or onion rings, large wedges of potatoes and healthy slices of onion, which are perfectly breaded and quite tasty. The portions are huge, and consuming an entire Tap Room burger and fries in one sitting is not recommended before a night out as it will really kill a person’s ability to function and cause a powerful desire to take a nap.

The beer selection is easily the best in San Marcos. Again, in a town dominated by kegs of Bud Ice and 24 packs of Keystone, The Tap Room is a welcome sight and a virtual utopia for those of us who like real beer. The selection is not the best I’ve seen in a bar or restaurant (see Gingerman in Austin), but it blows any other place in San Marcos out of the water. Not only do they have 30 + beers on tap, but they have an excellent selection of Belgian beer, including the 750 ml bottles of Chimay (white and blue), Duvel, and all of the beers from Unibroue. The bartenders and friendly and knowledgeable about beer, and will gladly make beer suggestions, if you can catch them at a time when they aren’t so busy. The wait staff is made up of attractive college girls who are friendly and flirtatious. My only complaint is that service can be slow sometimes, which is understandable given the popularity of The Tap Room and the large amount of people packed into the place every night. All in all, if you ever have the misfortune of being in San Marcos, do yourself a favor and salvage your night with a trip to The Tap Room.

129 E. Hopkins St., (512) 392-9824.