Creek Monkey Taproom
611 Escobar Street
Martinez, CA 94553
925-228-8787

Two things went through my head as I crossed the Benicia bridge towards Martinez: first, “wow, the Benicia bridge has come a long way from when it was the second ugliest bridge in the greater Bay Area” [ed: top honors went to the Carquinez bridge, though even it has vaulted into a sort of beige level of mediocrity with its replacement span; the ugliest bridge in the Bay Area is now ably held by the Richmond-San Rafael bridge, an honor which it is in absolutely no danger of losing in my lifetime]. The second thought as I stared at the curving road ahead, which traced a line of bulbous and streaming oil refineries, “holy crap, this is my exit.”

And indeed it was.

I grew up in the South Bay, and this was the corridor to my family’s vacation wonderland: Lake Tahoe. This is still early in the trip, before Walkman batteries started to give out, or sibling annoyances had strained backseat relations, but between the ugly bridge, the formerly-sizable “Mothball Fleet” visible from the bridge, or the Mad Max-looking refineries, this stretch of road remained indelibly etched in my childhood memories.

I never thought I’d descend into the tangle of smokestacks and piping, but here I was. Akilah had fallen asleep about twenty minutes back, and she wouldn’t have appreciated the enormity of this descent, as she grew up in the North Bay. As I took the exit and dropped onto the surface streets I might as well have been that poor Alderaanian Corellian corvette getting tractor beamed into the enormous Imperial Star Destroyer; I was going into the belly of the beast.

Which reminded me of how I came across Creek Monkey in the first place. A friend, stuck in traffic up on 680 headed to Reno, called me to make being stopped in traffic a little more palatable. I, naturally, jumped onto my computer to see where the backup was and how long she’d be stuck in traffic (she was hosed – she’d barely made it to beginning of a long slog that stretched almost to Highway 80). As I zoomed in, dots on the map representing local businesses began to resolve and among them was – you guessed it – Creek Monkey Tap House.

From the name alone I knew I should seek this place out. Poring over the website, I became certain this was a place I had to visit. Housed in an old Victorian on the edge of downtown Martinez, Creek Monkey overlooks Alhambra Creek. Their website tells the tale of where the name comes from: a circus wintered in nearby Alhambra Valley had among its menagerie some clever squirrel monkeys that managed to escape their confines and hid along Alhambra creek, forming a feral squirrel monkey colony (“feral squirrel monkey colony” is totally going to be the name of my thrash-metal klezmer band). “Word around town is that people still hear strange cries in the middle of the night and a lucky few have even spotted them. Yeah, it sounds far-fetched,” the description goes on, “but this is Martinez, a town where stranger things have happened.”

Are you hooked yet? I totally was. But I don’t live in the South Bay anymore, so practically never come through the Benicia bridge corridor – in fact, this was only the second time I’d crossed the bridge since the “new” spans had opened… in 2007. So, despite a couple years passing since I starred Creek Monkey on my Google Map, it took a specific trip to this area to make it happen.

Akilah woke up just as we passed from the razor-wire-tipped chain link fencing of the industrial area and into the adorably cute, flower-lined sidewalks of Martinez; the juxtaposition was jarring. Despite Google Girl telling us the location was on the right behind the street-side orange trees, and statue made of kegs (yeah, that should have been the giveaway, right?). As we pulled into the public parking lot across the street from Creek Monkey we saw the sign for the restaurant there: Beaver Creek Smokehouse… oh, my that sounds good… maybe we will have to come back…

We climbed the steps in front and into the yellow Victorian. We elected to sit inside, although the patio was quite inviting as it overlooked the creek. The layout of the restaurant itself seemed very much like, well, setting a restaurant in a Victorian – collections of tables divided by rooms. The signage on the bar seemed a bit sparse, but I knew what I wanted to drink anyway. Creek Monkey brews their own beer under the Rocksteady Brewing Company name, and their beers are blessed with suitably musical monikers: Rude Boy Red, 54-46 IPA (after the Toots and the Maytals track, not the Sublime cover you heathen!). Akilah ordered the former and I ordered the latter as we looked over the menu… which was fine… it really was… but….

Okay, look, if we hadn’t seen Beaver Creek Smokehouse, I wouldn’t have likely found fault with anything on the menu. I appreciated the Utah-referencing “Funeral Balls” appetizer, I love a place that has an iceberg wedge salad, and the Ropa Vieja sandwich with Cuban style pulled pork looked inviting… but bbq across the street? Hmm… We did drive out here for Creek Monkey, though… Okay, Akilah and I decided we’d have the nachos with our beer and then afterwards we would check out the bbq place.

What we didn’t realize was that the nacho plate was enormous. Akilah took points off for the melted cheddar cheese instead of the liquid “cheese” sauce of “traditional” nachos – it’s a fair criticism in my book. But it really didn’t take away from our enjoyment of chips, guac, pico de gallo, black beans, and jalapenos. And it went great with the beer.

About the beer… That is, after all, why we journeyed out here. Did it live up to my lofty expectations? Was it worth the trip? No, no it did not. Don’t get me wrong, it was good beer – the IPA wasn’t over-hopped, instead managing a nice balance between hoppiness and bitterness, leaning towards bitter as one would expect from an IPA. The red was surprisingly more hop-forward than I’d expect with interesting dried fruit notes on the back end, which lent it an enjoyable complexity.

Had I been the one stuck in traffic and I pulled off and found Creek Monkey, these beers would be a godsend. But having driven all that way, they were just good beers. Nothing wrong with that. If I find myself in the area, I’d definitely stop again – probably hang out on the patio and keep an eye out for feral squirrel monkeys. Or beavers…

Speaking of which, by the time we finished our massive pile of nachos we were too full to even investigate Beaver Creek Smokehouse. Next time!

Oh, yeah: about those beavers – Alhambra creek has them. Or had… it’s not clear whether they’re still around, but until we saw the “Beaver Creek” in the name I’d forgotten that five or six years ago the beavers were a big deal here. They’d built a couple dams that were threatening flooding if the creek rose. The city had the damns destroyed and marked the beavers for extermination until the Martinezians (that’s a word, right?) rose up in defense of the furry wood chewers. And they won – the beavers were spared and there was some clever piping installed to circumvent the dam and prevent flooding. …At least until the feral spider monkeys emerge en masse and take their revenge. Strange things in Martinez, indeed…