After Uptown favorite Blue closed last summer, executive chef Gene Briggs decided to get into restaurant consulting. With so many places opening, he kept busy, working with restaurants such as The People’s Market in Dilworth and SouthPark Grill.

In February, he began consulting with Legion Brewing as they prepared to open their SouthPark brewery with a much bigger kitchen. He planned to come up with a menu concept, then hire an executive chef. He found he liked working at Legion so much, he decided to take the job himself.

“As I got into working here and everything and really got to meet everybody, from Phil (Buchy, Legion’s owner) all the way down, everybody’s just awesome that works here, top to bottom.” Briggs says. “It’s a great company. So I decided to come on full time.”

With Briggs on board, the menu at Legion in SouthPark is far more intricate than what the Plaza Midwood location opened with. There’s an entire gluten-free menu, and healthy and vegan options alongside upscale bar classics, including wings, burgers, and pizza, cooked over the wood-fired grill. Then there’s a full menu of entrees, including trout, a ribeye, and pork shanks.

“I really think that SouthPark right now is the next evolution of breweries,” Briggs says of the menu. They’re serving 1,500 people some days, some who came in for a beer and snacks, others who sit down for a traditional dinner. The menu has to suit all sorts of diners and dining styles.

“We want to elevate brewery food to a level that’s as good as any restaurant out there,” Briggs says. “We’re utilizing a lot of the same principals and same cooking techniques that I did at Blue at SouthPark right now, and it’s a brewery.”

With such a progressive menu at the SouthPark location, the Plaza Midwood menu needed to catch up. When the brewery opened, Roots Café, then a food truck, provided a few snacks for customers. Sean Appleby, the kitchen manager at the original Legion Brewing, joined the staff there about 10 months ago. When he first started, he says, the kitchen just slung pretzels all day. He’s been transitioning the brewery’s former break space into a true kitchen, and has noticed that the food sales have been rising since.

“We’re selling all these sandwiches, people are coming to actually eat dinner now,” Appleby says. “It used to be people were just here for the beer. Now we’re finding a family of six is sitting down, and they’re all ordering food.”

Legion Plaza Midwood dropped its new menu this past weekend. See some of the dishes below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is this the new brewery food? Do you think craft beer’s next level is including a full-service, craft restaurant too? Comment below and let us know what you think. —Kristen Wile

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