First look inside Dolores Park-adjacent Cervecería de MateVeza

Cervecería de MateVeza opens this Saturday at 18th and Church, right across the street from the park. Their black lager is bangin’.

It’s a cozy space that’ll warm up quick when it starts to get chilly in the park and everybody races over for a beer and an empanada.

We’re told they’re the only brewery in town other than Anchor to use real copper brewing gear.

Lots more pictures and reportage after the jump:

The space gets lots of light, and the people watching is decent. (And surely much better on the weekends.)

This fridge is key. They’ve got tons of interesting stuff available to-go, and, again, it’s right next to the park. Remind me to remind them to offer plastic cups like Bi-Rite does (for when you get a big bottle of something Belgian or something.)

They’ll obviously have their own stuff on draft, but they’ll also be offering a handful of other local and regional favorites.

This is the empanada oven. They’ll have meaty and veggie options, hot, ready to go.

Can’t wait!

38 Responses to “First look inside Dolores Park-adjacent Cervecería de MateVeza”

  1. Noe Valley Mom says:

    We just made Dolores Park into the worlds most expensive playground for the kiddies from Noe Valley so please don’t open a bar right next door :( to the new drug free zone (smoke that pot at home) mommy approved park!

    • Jekka says:

      Fake comment-troll!

    • kaFe says:

      bwahaha. that park is for stoner kids. i’ve seen that white shroom looking structure popping out of there.

      • Hanging in the park says:

        Listen up – anyone who has been to DP since kiddy land opened will note that a real effort has been made make gay men who sunbath feel uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the motorcycle cops driving through the park. But the vibe of the park has changed. Free sprit has been replaced with a Walnut Creek like atmosphere. Which was the plan all along. Now once the soccer field is in place the whole park will become a kids area.

  2. ALWAYS HIGH says:

    is that saison de lent? bottom row, 11th bottle from left.

  3. Haz Been says:

    Sweet just what the neighborhood needs, ANOTHER BAR!!! <—said in a slightly loud voice with more than a little sarcasm

    • Haz Been says:

      Seriously, I hope all these no talent-having, monkey-see, monkey-do assholes opening bars next to bars next to cocktail lounges go bankrupt when the bubble bursts. Then maybe we can go back to living in diverse and eclectic neighborhoods that offer more than an excuse for chad (look at me Mom, I’m not a Yuppie anymore, I’m a hipster) Williams to act like an ass in public because it’s what people in the Mission do. That’s what happened to North Beach and now all anyone says is, “It’s great in the daytime, but I never go there at night.”

      • pay attention says:

        …not just another bar: the actually brew their own beer and will be brewing on-site. I can get behind a locally made, and frankly quite tasty, beer getting some front row retail in our neighborhood. The owner has been perfecting his craft for the better part of the last 10 years. I’d say there is some level of talent required for that.

      • D. Jon Moutarde says:

        What bubble?

        • so very sad says:

          seriously?

          -dotcom bubble 2.0: zynga, groupon, twitter, yahoo, etc. all either insolvent or massively over-valued at best.

          -food bubble: restaurants every two feet in the mission, crowding long-time, sustainable businesses.

      • MrEricSir says:

        San Francisco “haz been” a drinking town since long before any of us were born. Or our grandparents, for that matter.

      • Emily says:

        Have you been to San Francisco? Bars are what we do.

        • Haz been says:

          Emily, I’m from SF…as in 2nd generation native. I actually drink most nights at my local (thankfully no longer the Mission, or cultural equivalent of Starbucks for white girls on their first big pub crawl outside the sorority row) And perhaps you “do” bars, or more aptly bars full of directionless, tasteless, artistic types in an effort to usurp some sort of sense of purpose in an existence otherwise devoid of meaning. But some of us don’t drink to belong, we drink to escape (people like you).

          OK, I apologize in advance. That was mean and not necessarily directed at you personally. But it felt good and so I wrote it.

          • Emily says:

            Yeah, even with an apology, you’re still kind of a dick. We could be nice people for all you know.

            And with that, I’m done.

    • Ben says:

      What does the neighborhood need?

    • What??? I’ve lived on the corner of 18th and Church for five years and I’ve always thought we needed a closer bar.

  4. KPatrick says:

    Ok haters, first of all it looks more like a cafe than a bar and secondly there aren’t any bars within like, a four block radius of this place. What cocktail lounge are you referring to? I think they created a beautiful space and are selling a unique product. I’ll definitely be checking it out soon.

  5. think_for_me says:

    White hipsters?…check. It’s cool!

  6. Taylor! says:

    I’ve seen Mate’Veza around for years. They’re the real deal. Local. Craft Brewed. They carry their stuff at whole foods, Rainbow, etc. I think its cool this concept opened up. A craft beer tasting room (WITH brew kettles!) is far from being a bar in my opinion. Have you ever tried to get plastered of a full bodied stout? Thats like several turkey dinners. More likely to happen off a well vodka and sprite from the taps of any Noe Valley haunt. Anyhow, ease off you teetotalers… I’m happy for the new playground (on the OTHERSIDE of the park)… but give me a break, does this place really look threatening to you? Adults need a place to connect/decompress as well… and hate to say it…but Badlands just ain’t my thing. I’ll be paying this place a visit definitely.

  7. Taylor! says:

    P.S. – Remember a couple years ago, this very same location was a corner store that sold malt liquor in paper bags and cigarettes for $.25 each to the High School kids. By comparison I think things are looking pretty good.

  8. sassy says:

    I’ve tasted the stuff and it’s DAMN GOOD BEER. Totally different. Totally awesome. Give it a try — you’ll be happy.

  9. Herr Doktor Professor Deth Vegetable says:

    This looks delicious. I don’t normally end up over in that neighborhood, but I may have to make a special try to check this out.

  10. MrEricSir says:

    In regards to some of the opinions about the price of booze in this city, I wonder what would happen if someone opened an SF-based brewery that competed on price?

    If we had a locally made cheap crappy beer, would people buy it instead of PBR/Tecate?

    • jacob says:

      Southern Pacific’s Pale Ale is only $3/pint on site… I’d say that’s pretty competitive.

      • tk says:

        It’s good beer, too. I would totally buy that at a store if they bottled it. Or canned it, even better.

        GET ON THIS SOUTHERN PACIFIC

    • Erik says:

      It is surprisingly difficult to brew cheap crappy stuff like PBR/Tecate or equivalent on the craft-brewing scale. You need to be operating at the tens of millions of barrels/year scale to be able to do it cheaply enough.

  11. Soonerdiver says:

    Right across the street from Mission High! Gotta give the kids someplace to go at lunch time, right?

  12. Clueless_Haz Bens_and_Noe_Moms says:

    I’ll be mean, and I’m not a hipster, I am pro SF small business:
    You naysayers, are likened to a bunch of Helen Lovejoy level fanatics. Kids in this city see far worse things, than a nicely drawn brewery. What are you going to put blinders on them, tell them it’s all make believe. Children aren’t naive to the fact that when they become adults they can and will, do as they chose, drinking included. They have the internet, they are exposed to a things 1000 times racier. This is an innovative brewery, that does nationwide sales, and gives SF nationwide exposure. This brewpub is threatening your children, LOL, are you serious, you live in a city, try 6th or Turk and Taylor sometime. Stop using your kids as a shield for your own shortcomings, IE you never had a good idea like this in your life. I’ve bought Mate Vesa for year’s now, you drink it like a fine wine. It’s a brewery, not a bar, not a cocktail lounge, it looks fancier than most dives in that hood, good no sleaze, guess it won’t have to see ol’ Haz Ben’s face. The place looks like it ads a bit of pizazz and quality, to that once barren location, and it should be welcomed, good luck to it. All the rest of you suckers just look the other way, keep slumming in your sleaze bars and mommy cover your kids eyes to the entirety of the world, if need be, they’ll rebel against your oppression soon enough.

    • Haz Been says:

      “gives SF nationwide exposure”

      Wow, that’s what this Podunk town needs…exposure!!! I mean what with all this ample and affordable housing and extra space to expand…

      The sad truth is that when bars (even those that claim to be art lounges, gastropubs, dive bars, etc) saturate a neighborhood, that neighborhood becomes less of a community than a destination for the 24-hour party people. Forgive me for living in the past, but I love the city of my birth too much to sit idly by while yuppies, disguised as hipsters commodify and devalue the culture they want so desperately to belong to.

      Does that better explain opposition to yet “another bar?”

  13. Clueless_Haz Bens_and_Noe_Moms says:

    You’ve been here 2 generations and you still don’t get it, like Emily said this is a drinking town, and a very large amount of our economy depends on the buying and selling of alcoholic products. How do you take yourself seriously do you even go to that hood, Delores park is strewn with people drinking, smoking, enjoying all types of vices, for you to pretend that–that neighborhood is some clean, sleepy, little area, is delusional. More like Delores park is a destination to indulge in those vices safely around friends, and community, who cares about your safety. You say it destroys community, your an idiot, not an anthropologist. Anyone who goes there on a nice sunny day knows that is a very large and powerfully well connected community of all types of people, a cross-section of all levels of class, age, and race. It’s free to go there, it’s safe and folks are friendly and welcoming to most kind people, it’s a great community building space, duh. So if your looking for sleepy, safe, or drug free area, sounds like it’s time for you to get the hell outta dodge, take your false purist attitude away from OUR community. People like you devalue the spirit of SF as a haven for everyone, folks who come here from all over the world to express themselves fully, sober or doped up, SF is a bastion of freedom of expression. You are not the one to bitch about gentrification, sounds like your entire motivation for being here is to sanitize and inhibit that freedom, to denounce community, your the ultimate puritanical, gentrifier. As far as my comment on this business being a fine example for SF ingenuity, my ideologue, is that here is an organic company, the first MATE based beer in the country that is claiming the “SF” moniker, in the organic world food or beverage SF isn’t really seen as the leader, your denouncement of a SF small organic business trying to make a mark on the world is even more reason you need to be the last generation that lives here, move along. SF has and will always be a place for party people, sober folks, innovators, and tolerant families. I see people of all economic incomes mixing it up, if you don’t get it then your pretty darn clueless to the real communities of this city and it’s economics, old man. Ha Ha I’d hardly think of hipsters as Yuppies, we’ve moved beyond those outdated terms anyhow. You must be some old cantankerous man stuck in SF, trolling online stuck in a faux timewarp, worried about your property value. It’s time for you to retire to the burbs, you of all people, can’t stop progress. Puleze!!! Long live the freqs, and open minded people, who make up the real San Francisco your blind to, and long live Mate Vesa and any other SF businesses, that is lucky enough to make it work here and represent our community in a positive, dynamic, and stylish new way!

  14. Haz Been says:

    “Long live the freqs, and open minded people, who make up the real San Francisco”

    Wow, I never thought we agree on anything within the context of this debate. However, what you are missing is that the “freqs” don’t live here anymore! They are gone. Moved to Portland, Oakland or somewhere they can afford to live, eat and be creative. Who are you kidding?!

    The problem is you and your imperialist friends are trying to remake this place in your image rather than become a part of what it was that attracted you here in the first place.

    “(Yuppie/hipster) we’ve moved beyond those outdated terms anyhow.”

    Have we? Is that because Urban Outfitters turned your cultural affiliation into a crass, over-commercialized farse? Well guess what Tiny Tim, there are some of us hold outs left who actually like unique neighborhoods that offer something other than safe, homogenized attractions that read like a list of “things white people like.”

    It comes down to humility and you and the other colonizers don’t have an inkling of what that means. You are destroying the very city you claim to love. And at the end of the day, when this city is sucked dry you’ll move on like the plague of locusts you are on to the next, seemingly unending harvest.

  15. Goody says:

    Haz Been:

    Sounds like you need a drink. Or will that get you more angry and surly…bet it does!

    You can see all this change as exciting, or fear it. If you fear it, time to be the last generation of your linage to live in SF.

    Nastiness is what’s ruining our city. Like your special kind of nastiness. The “I remember when” BS.

    Still watching the news on the TV. Isn’t it horrible? All the things wrong with the world and our city…or is it your information source?

    Progress hurts people that don’t want to change. Go find your tribe somewhere else or maybe you can find something to enjoy here, like some fine locally brewed beer!

    I know what I would rather have…

    Cheers Haz Been!