Wayfinder Has Good Food, Great Cocktails and Solid Collaboration Beers

304 SE 2nd Ave., wayfinder.beer. 11 am-10 pm Sunday-Wednesday, 11 am-midnight Thursday-Saturday.

This shiny new Central Eastside Industrial District brewpub comes from a team that includes the affable and experienced Charlie Devereux, formerly of Double Mountain, plus Rodney Muirhead, whose Podnah's Pit rose from a humble cart to become our Restaurant of the Year back in 2011. Wayfinder has some very good food, great cocktails and very good collaboration beers. It does not yet have its own beer—brewmaster Kevin Davey has been collaborating all over town while waiting for his own system to be installed. We still haven't had a purebred Pilsner from Davey, whose impressive résumé includes a stop at Chuckanut, the standout lagerhaus in Bellingham, Wash. But the collabs he's done so far are impressive—especially a cloudy Bernie Bro IPA made with Zoiglhaus and a hoppy Pils made with Gigantic, plus a lemony, juicy IPL brewed at Fat Head's that amounts to a rounder, chewier IPA. Though the beers have been brewed all over the city, few have been duds. And working the big, woody bar, you'll find local institution Jacob Grier, who literally wrote the book on beer cocktails, something almopst no other brewery has explored with such success—his trigger Trigger Warning ($11), which combines cloudy IPA with lime, cilantro habanero syrup and barrel-aged cachaca, and it's terrific. Combine that with some of the city's best nachos, and things are looking good.