An Esteemed California Brewery is Coming to Washington
First, let me introduce you to the players. Lone Pine Larder, which will host this summer’s pop-up beer garden, is a highly rated deli, lunch spot, and specialty market located in Eastsound, Washington, on Orcas Island. The focus is on fresh, seasonal meals and house-made provisions. It is operated by Spencer and Sabrina Bezaire.
Spencer Bezaire, the chef at Lone Pine Larder, is close friends with Bob Kunz, the owner of Highland Park Brewery in Los Angeles. If that brewery’s name sounds familiar, maybe you’re remembering that Highland Park Brewery enjoyed enormous success at the Great American Beer Festival a couple of years ago. At the 2024 competition, the brewery won four gold medals, including awards in some hotly contested categories: American-style IPA, contemporary American-style lager, American-style pale ale, and juicy/hazy imperial IPA. That success netted Highland Park Brewery a coveted Brewery of the Year award.
Popping Up in the San Juan Islands
Bob Kunz and his partner, Tiff, are coming to Orcas Island this summer, and they’re bringing beer. They’ll operate a Highland Park Brewery beer garden at Lone Pine Larder starting on July 1st and lasting through the summer (until the end of August).
According to Bob, “Lone Pine does the food, we do the beer. They [Lone Pine] have a large outdoor lot surrounded by many trees, right in the middle of Eastsound. We’ll have the beer pouring at a beer bar outside all day. Spencer has a fresh summer menu with some seafood (fish sandwich!), some wood-grilled items, wings, etc. It’s gonna be awesome! His food is incredible.”
Beer Garden Details
- Kicks off on July 1st and lasts through the end of August.
- The beer garden will offer six beers on tap, along with others available in cans, including cans to go.
- The lineup will rotate as fresh beers arrive from California.
- They’ll also launch two collaboration beers during the pop-up: one brewed with Single Hill Brewing and the other with pFriem Family Brewers.
- The beer garden will operate Wednesday through Saturday from noon until 7 p.m., and on Sundays from noon until 3 p.m.
“We’ll have six taps, but we’ll be sending cans too,” says Bob. “Essentially, whatever is fresh, we’ll be rotating and pouring. We plan to have Timbo (West Coast Pils) and Baseball (rice lager) pouring the whole time and then rotate through West Coast hoppy beer and hazy hoppy beer. We’ll probably rotate through a fair amount of hoppy beer over the two months.”
Washington Roots
Bob and Tiff are no strangers to Western Washington. They both grew up in the Seattle area. Bob attended Western Washington University in Bellingham, where he also got his first brewery job, an internship at Boundary Bay Brewery. In fact, back in his Bellingham days, one of Bob’s roommates was Josh pFriem: the two of them began homebrewing together. Look where that led?
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