A Full House Built on Bland Ambition

Taps in Brea, about as ambitious a brew pub/restaurant as northeast O.C. has ever seen, looks more like the dinner call. At 9 p.m. on a recent Friday, it was mobbed--there was a 45-minute wait for tables and the huge attached sports bar was overflowing.

Four of us parked ourselves next to the front lectern, the better to see the gleaming copper fermentation tanks, which produce 16 varieties of beer. Looking around, I could see Taps’ appeal.

The place is huge and lively; the centerpiece of this 14,000-square-foot establishment is a semicircular oyster bar, where a lucky few can scarf up fresh Malpeques and Fanny Bays and wash them down with good homemade beers. Kolsch, a straw-yellow German-style ale, for one, and Oatmeal Stout, a dark, malty, almost chocolaty beverage for another.

When we were finally ushered to our booth, we could make out a tape of big-band music barely audible above the crowd noise. The room reminded one of my companions of an enormous barn. I thought of a deconstructionist airplane hangar.

It’s largely brick, both inside and out. The ceiling, which must be 30 feet high, is crisscrossed by wooden beams resembling parts from an Erector set. Industrial light fixtures snake down from above, like booms on a Hollywood sound stage. From where we sat, right in the center of the action, we could see everything--chefs at the oyster bar, busboys working much harder than the food servers and even a game of pool being played on the far side of the sports bar.

One of the best ways to get acquainted with the brewery side of this operation is to order a beer sampler, 2-ounce pours of the five beers being served on any given day. All the beers I tried were excellent, the two I mentioned before, plus a classic Hefeweizen wheat beer, a refreshingly yeasty Belgian light and a fruity IPA (India Pale Ale).

I wish I could say the kitchen was as accomplished as the brewing operation, but it isn’t. As I’ve said, Taps is ambitious. Owner Joe Manzella, who runs this place along with his father, Fred, and his sister, Michele, has put together a dauntingly large menu--dozens of appetizers and lots of fresh seafood, plus stews, gumbos, salads, pizzas, pastas, even a few Asian dishes. It’s not surprising there are glitches.

Not that there aren’t high spots. The oysters, mostly from the Pacific Northwest, literally gleam with freshness and are all delicious. And Taps makes as good a muffaletta sandwich as I’ve tasted away from the Central Grocery in New Orleans. It’s a fresh ciabatta loaf spread with a terrific olive salad and piled high with Genoa salami, mortadella, smoked ham and provolone cheese.

Many side dishes are excellent as well. The smoked bacon green beans, laced with the perfect amount of lean, smoky bacon, have real snap. Garlic and sherry mushrooms are a wonderful combination--and the portion is a big bowlful. Taps makes a nice creamed-corn side dish and sumptuous macaroni and cheese. Most of the potato dishes are good too.

But if you order from other parts of the menu, you often run into problems. One evening, I got a mushy grilled artichoke without any of the charred taste you expect from grilling. The seafood gumbo soup is said to contain shrimp, chicken, andouille sausage and dirty rice, garnished with a boiled crawfish. Mine was a bland bowl of rice, chicken, tiny bits of sausage and no detectable shrimp or crawfish.

The wood-oven pizzas have a crisp crust, but the toppings can be slapdash. The other three cheeses in the pizza quattro formaggi are overwhelmed by the Gorgonzola. My “swampfire” pizza, with a baroque topping of grilled chicken, sauteed mushrooms, scallions, blue cheese and a spicy sauce Taps calls “swampfire wing sauce,” was soggy.

Then there was Fred’s kung pao chicken, breaded chicken tenders sauteed with garlic, ginger, hardly any chopped peanuts and an insignificant quantity of Thai chiles. Any resemblance between a real fiery Chinese kung pao and this baby-food-bland dish is coincidental.

You’d do better with the steaks, chops or seafood, all grilled on a charcoal broiler. The 16-ounce Delmonico is the most flavorful steak, and also a better bargain than the 20-ounce Porterhouse, which is on the pricey side for meat that is only USDA Choice--$24.95. I say that not because my steak was tough, though it was, but because it had almost no flavor.

I have no complaint about the seafood here. Both the grilled Atlantic salmon and northern halibut were tasty and properly moist. I also quite liked a soft-shell crab po’ boy, served on a good French roll dressed with remoulade sauce, tomatoes and pickles. I wish I could have tried the interesting-sounding rustic seafood pot pie, made with lobster, scallops, shrimp and halibut, but the restaurant was out on all three of my visits.

I give credit to Taps for making a variety of desserts, though I would like them more if made with real whipped cream rather than canned, which is so quick to collapse.

There’s a raspberry pear cobbler with lots of fruit soaked in Port under a flaky brown crust. Drunken voodoo cake is a rich mousse cake topped with a chocolate molasses ganache, good despite the fact you can’t really taste any rum. And bananas Foster shortcake is a terrific idea that fell short at our table only because the shortcake (which is really more like a pecan cookie) had been baked as hard as rock.

Sound the bugle. Taps, this is your wake-up call.

Taps is moderate to expensive. Starters are $5.95 to $15.95. Pizzas are $7.95 to $8.95. Fresh seafoods are $13.95 to $17.95. Desserts are $5.95 to $7.95.

BE THERE

Taps, 101 E. Imperial Highway. Brea. (714) 257-0101. Open 11 a.m.-11 p.m. daily. All major cards.