Firestone Walker Brewing opens taproom restaurant in Venice

Firestone Walker, California’s fourth largest craft brewery, has opened the doors on the long-anticipated Los Angeles outpost, which includes a lounge, a restaurant, retail space, and an on-site brewery (that’s still in bureaucratic limbo).

First announced in September 2013 the progress on the project near the corner of Washington and Lincoln Blvds. in Venice has been slow going, but the restaurant finally soft opens for dinner service Thursday and will add lunch hours in May.

Fans of Firestone Walker, who may be familiar with the brewery’s Paso Robles headquarters or its off-shoot wild ale production facility in Buellton, should feel right at home in the new venue. Many signature design elements are shared among the three locations, including plenty of reclaimed wood, exposed brick and stainless steel. Bar stools in the lounge are made from barrel parts, and staves from barrels that once held the brewery’s acclaimed Parabola imperial stout line dress the dining room’s back wall.

A booth in the new dining room at the Firestone Walker Brewing Co. restarautn in Venice.

(John Verive / For The Times)

The three facilities “feel like a family,” said brewery co-founder David Walker. “They are individuals, but you can see the common DNA.”

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The most eye-catching elements in the restaurant dining room are two “beer vortex” booths that were carved out of decommissioned brewhouse equipment from the Paso Robles production brewery. “We want people to make friends and share ideas,” Walker said of the communal seating, adding: “Beer is a beautiful social lubricant, and this is how beer culture grows.”

Designed to support but not get in the way of the beers, the restaurant menu covers the gastropub bases with pizzas, burgers, tacos and a variety of small plates and snacks.

All the brewery’s regular production beers are available on tap at the bar, as well as to-go in bottles, cans or growlers from the retail space across from the main building, and plenty of Firestone Walker’s more esoteric special releases will also be available on the Los Angeles campus. Then there’s the million-dollar miniature brewery installed and ready to brew beer, but permitting challenges have delayed the final approval from the City of Los Angeles.

Firestone Walker has hit many of these delays throughout the three and a half years since purchasing the property in 2013.

Some of the beers on tap at Firestone Walker Brewing Co.

(John Verive / For The Times)

“We’ve fought for 18 months to keep the [brewing] system,” Walker said. “The city hasn’t been obstructive, but it has been challenging.” He acknowledges that doing business in the metropolis of Los Angeles is more arduous than in the “small towns” of Paso Robles and Buellton, but he’s eager to bring the Firestone Walker brand closer to its fans in L.A.

The 500-square-foot mini brewery, dubbed the Propagator, is intended to be a research and development lab for Firestone Walker, where the brewers will delve into the more rustic side of beer — “where beer meets wood,” to use Walker’s description. Beer and wood have a long history at Firestone Walker; the very first beer made under the Firestone Walker brand was Double Barrel Ale: a beer partially fermented in oak barrels. There’s also a sprawling barrel aging room at the Paso Robles production facility where strong ales mature in used spirit barrels, and the Barrelworks building in Buellton where all of Firestone’s experiments with wild yeast and bacteria produce sour beer.

The unfiltered, small batch beers will only be available at the L.A. location, but there’s no predicting how long before the final approvals are filed.

“We want to be brewing here by the end of the year,” said Walker.

3205 W. Washington Blvd., Marina Del Rey, (310) 439-8264, www.firestonebeer.com.

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