Cheers! Steins Beer Garden Opens to Lots of Craft Brew Fanfare

Prost! Kampai! A votre sante! Cheers!

Mountain View City Council and Chamber of Commerce members, along with area residents, joined Ted Kim, owner of Steins Beer Garden, for the grand opening of this new craft beer restaurant at 895 Villa St. on Thursday.

"This is over six years in the making for me," said Kim. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined this would have been happening."

The , who now with his staff of 109 hopes to provide quality food and service—and beer—to South Bay residents and visitors.

"Beer brings out the best in Mountain View," Councilman John McAlister said.

The quality of the food is high, too. Chef Colby Reade sources his food primarily from local farms. He gets the chicken for his entrees and sandwiches from 38 North Petaluma in North Bay and his eggs from Glaum Egg Ranch in Aptos. More than 50 percent of his produce is sourced from California and 45 percent of his last produce order came from Marin, according to a spokesperson.

But the stars of the restaurant continue to be the beer and this excites a brewery like Los Angeles-based Hangar 24, which now can tap into Mountain View's demographic. Steins is only the third restaurant in the South Bay that serves Hangar 24 and it has three beers on draft.

"The vision of what they have and what they are going to do is what we liked," said Josh Gould, marketing manager for Hangar 24, about some of the beer pairings Kim and Reade hope to plan. "This was a recipe built on success and not failure."

Gould was also attracted by the city's vibrancy and growing beer culture.

"Having a place like this and knowing that you are going to cater to the Internet, technology type of crowd who's not coming in to drink Bud Light or Coors Light," he said. "They are looking for something unique."

Unique beers not found on draft around Mountain View or other South Bay locations was what brought the large lunch crowd to the restaurant's first day.

A pair of friends, on their way to lunch at Tied House, walked in just because they noticed the commotion.

"We didn't realize it had opened and when we asked we heard that it had only been open a few hours," said one of the guys.

They ordered flights of the fruit beers and could be heard saying, "Ah, this is good," several times.

A married couple, with a love of craft beer, ordered the India Pale Ale and assorted flights. They'd anxiously awaited Steins' opening.

"I'm very excited about this place," Jonathan Lyons said, who has started to brew his own beer. "We've been looking at this for a while and Mountain View needs this. A good selection of craft beer on tap is something that we don't have."

Wife Alexandra Acker-Lyons also felt the wait was worth it.

"It's good beer, good food and a good atmosphere," she said.

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