North Country Brewing Review – A Restaurant with Brewery

Published by Angie. Last Updated on February 10, 2023.

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We had all intentions of visiting North Country Brewing in Slippery Rock and writing this post in the style of our other brewery reviews (like Grist House or Strange Roots). But shortly after we arrived, we knew that doing so would be a disservice.

Why? Well, even though North Country Brewing is just that, a brewery, its Slippery Rock location is as much of a restaurant as it is a brewery, and we left with this one having the beer as a secondary thought.

So just as you may visit The Harmony Inn for the food and enjoy North Country's beer along with it (a second restaurant this brewery owns in the town of the same name), you will likely do the same when visiting the brewpub in Slippery Rock as well!

It is because of that reason that this particular review follows our restaurant review format, because today, we're talking about the food.

North Country Brewing Offers a Full Brewpub Menu

House Bread at North Country Brewing in Slippery Rock

The food menu at North Country Brewing Co. includes everything you'd want if you're in the mood for pub fare like burgers and wings, but it also includes a few more elevated options like salmon, crab cakes, and pasta dishes.

Two appetizer favorites of ours are the backwoods country dip and the pub pretzels. The backwoods country dip is a spinach artichoke dip that's so creamy and garlicky and is served with crunchy tortilla chips for dipping.

If we only have enough room for one appetizer, it's always gotta be the pub pretzels.

Pub Pretzels are a Must

These babies are deep-fried so that they're super crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside (for those who have visited The Harmony Inn, they're more or less identical). Better still, add on the black bear mustard and beer cheese for dipping; the former is a honey mustard with a spicy mustard kick while the latter is a perfectly smooth cheese dip with a hint of tanginess from the beer.

Salmon at North Country Brewing

On our most recent trip we perused the specials and chose the honey sriracha salmon which had a nice crispy crust on the outside while still maintaining a ton of moist flakiness on the inside. The sauce was a good balance of spicy and sweet and the fish was served with our choice of two sides. We opted for the glazed baby carrots and the potato pancakes – the potato pancakes are definitely a crowd pleaser with their pan fried crunchy exterior.

Burger at North Country

Jeremy typically goes for the burgers here which you can order with a wide range of toppings and even meat types. Most recently he tried the roasted garlic burger which was topped with sauteed onions, roasted garlic, mushrooms, and Swiss cheese. We love that you can order a “farm to fork” style meat which includes beef from North Country's own cattle or from local farm Pasture Perfect Beef. The resulting patties are juicy, flavorful, and totally local!

Chicken and Waffles Sandwich at North Country

On a second visit, Jeremy went for the fried chicken and waffles sandwich- a big hunk of fried chicken, topped with bacon, and sandwiched between two fluffy waffles and accompanied by a mound of french fries. This one hit the perfect balance of sweet/salty and is the kind of sandwich Jeremy proclaimed he'd order exclusively from then on- it was that good.

Sample Their Beer with a Flight of Them All

Beer Flight at North Country Brewing

In a way, the food at North Country Brewing overshadowed the beers. While this one produces a healthy mix of conventional and unusual beer flavors, I ended up finding a lot of them to be a fair bit light.

The two styles I think North Country Brewing does quite well are their fruited sours (which seems to vary almost every time we visit in Gose/kettle sour style) as well as their fruited wheat beer (with the honey blossom wheat being a crowd favorite on our latest trip).

Thankfully, North Country Brewing has an option for those of you who, like us, are not sure if you can commit to any one beer here- a beer flight! But this brewery doesn't just have any beer flight, they have a monster beer flight where you can try nearly the entire draft list! 

This one amounts to over a dozen samples (just over four pints), so it is best to try with a group, but is the kind of flight board that will let you sample your way around the menu to settle on a favorite. While we were only really intrigued by the two styles mentioned above, we are big fans of this setup as means to try them all and find out for yourself!

Overall, we left North Country Brewing more impressed with the food than the draft beer list. While we certainly found brews that we'd happily pair with our meal, we have to be honest in this one- we'll be returning for the food (especially the chicken and waffle sandwich).

North Country Brewing is located at 141 S Main Street in Slippery Rock, PA

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