My sister C. and I decided to spend a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon at Chuck's Hop Shop (at 656 NW 85th Street, Seattle) known fondly as the Land of a Thousand Beers. We decided to walk the mile and a half to the beer mecca known as Chuck's.

First because it's nice to take a walk in the fall--the air is crisp but the days aren't too short. Autumn has come to stay in Seattle and I couldn't be happier. Second because we wanted to drink beer together.
<a title="Chuck's Beer by karolinka.sofia, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/10303897074/" target="_blank"><img alt="Chuck's Beer" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2861/10303897074_2a126b6498_z.jpg" width="640" height="480" /></a>
Chuck's Hop Shop claims to be the land of a thousand beers. I didn't count them so I don't know if this is true but they have a serious selection of bottled beers and beer on-tap. We decided to split two different flights of beer. One was an IPA and the other something like a freshly hopped flight.<img title="More..." alt="" src="http://carolynemigh.com/wp/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" />

When we'd arrived we'd hoped to be able to sit outside but all of the tables were spoken for. Luckily we found a table inside, in back. We got in line for our flights of beer at exactly the right time and only waited for a few minutes. By the time we sat down at our table, the line stretched half way to the door.
<a title="Chuck's Beer by karolinka.sofia, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/10304092053/" target="_blank"><img alt="Chuck's Beer" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7390/10304092053_e40674e0bd_z.jpg" width="640" height="480" /></a>
It was impressive how popular it was on a Saturday afternoon at 5:30. There were people crawling everywhere.  Lots of people seemed to be filling growlers and heading out again but the guys working the beer taps never had a spare moment.
<a title="Chuck's Beer by karolinka.sofia, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/10303905884/" target="_blank"><img alt="Chuck's Beer" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5509/10303905884_a18d320a70_z.jpg" width="640" height="480" /></a>
I think that drinking a flight of beer is an interesting way to compare beers and see what you like. After living abroad for the last five years, I am really not familiar with any of the locally brewed beer and I only recognize the names of the bigger micro-breweries. I just don't know what I like. It's really not the worst problem in the world to have.

So we drank beer, laughed, texted our dAd, and then decided that we'd better get some food from the food truck parked out front. This was indeed an excellent plan.
<a title="Chuck's Beer by karolinka.sofia, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/29050866@N06/10304100403/" target="_blank"><img alt="Chuck's Beer" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3722/10304100403_4558a193f1_z.jpg" width="640" height="480" /></a>
The food truck on Saturday was Ezell's Chicken. There weren't a lot of choices but I think that's best as in my mind it's always better to do a few things really well than to try to do too much and not do any of it well. The choices on Saturday were either chicken wings or chicken strips served with a dip, rolls and french fries.

I went for the spicy chicken wings and ranch. The wings were perfect: crispy, not too greasy, spicy but not too spicy and served steaming hot. I really couldn't be happier with Ezell's Chicken. Here's to the food truck fad (or is it a phenomenon?)!

The cool thing about Chuck's is that different food trucks rotate through their parking lot. You can find out <a href="http://chucks85th.com/" target="_blank">who's going to be serving up dinner on the Chuck's website or what's on-tap</a>.