It’s not uncommon for us to pop over to Penticton for a meal and Bad Tattoo Brewing is one of our favourite restaurants there for a number of reasons, most importantly that the food and drinks are delicious.
In the warmer months, there is a large outdoor seating area that doubles the capacity of the restaurant. Regardless of the season, this place tends to be very busy and I strongly advise that you make reservations.
Here are some important points of note:
- Parking is not plentiful, though we usually manage to find street parking close by that you may or may not have to pay for, depending on what day and the time of day you visit.
- If you haven’t made reservations and find yourself having to wait for a table there are some benches to sit on just outside the restaurant.
- The bathrooms are wheelchair accessible. That said, getting to them would be a challenge in terms of the space available. The restaurant is always very busy and cramped.
- As a large person, navigating around people and tables is sometimes very difficult here, depending on how tables have been configured on any given evening but also just in general. If I was using a wheelchair or other mobility device such as a walker I would most certainly call ahead and let the staff know that when reserving a table. I’m sure they would arrange things ahead of time to make adequate space. Otherwise, it might be a real struggle.
- After we were seated, some tables surrounding us were moved to accommodate different party sizes and it meant that I had to disturb a couple of people in order to be able to leave the table. To be clear, a thin woman had to get up to use the washroom and even she had to have her friend move their table over and hang on to their pizza so that it didn’t get knocked off.
- The chairs feel sturdy, do not have arms, and can be moved around (as can the tables) to accommodate larger or smaller people.
- This place can get loud because it’s small and people are generally drinking, eating, and having a good time. It’s difficult to have a conversation without shouting, which can be a problem even if your hearing if good but is especially difficult if you have hearing challenges. We find this to be less of an issue in the summer because eating in the outside area usually means there is less confined background noise.
- The outside area is covered so you get to enjoy the heat and the sun if you sit on the periphery but also there is shade.
- We have always found the staff to be friendly and the service to be fast and efficient.
Their menu has some staple items that are constant, but many of their pizzas change with the seasons and availability of local ingredients. All of their pizzas are cooked in a large wood-fired oven and the crusts are thin, crispy, and tasty. I’ll provide a link to their site at the end of the post and their full menu can be viewed there.
In the above picture you can see their soft pretzels with honey mustard dip, made with locally sourced honey. The drinks include a grapefruit radler and a non-alcoholic root beer that Bad Tattoo brews on-site. Note that this is the first restaurant that I’ve been to that has made the switch from plastic straws to a paper ones. I hope more local restaurants will do the same!
Bad Tattoo brews a number of their own beverages and you can take tours of the small brewery and try tasting flights or full-sized glasses of their offerings on tap.
Pizzas come in two sizes and if you order the larger size you can ask for each half to have different toppings. The right half of this pizza is their Donair Pizza (a seasonal one that we haven’t seen before) and the left half is their Black & Blue (a staple that I can never resist and if you can make it last that long it is amazing for breakfast the following day).
From the menu description, the Donair Pizza includes house-made lamb and pork sausage, heirloom tomatoes, sweet and tangy donair sauce, fresh sliced cucumber and mint, on a base of green barbanzo pesto sauce. Both my husband and I really enjoyed this one, and I’m normally not a big fan of sausage meats but this was gooood. It had lots of flavour and wasn’t overly fatty, as I often find sausages to be. I liked the contrast of the fresh, crunchy cucumbers and mint, and the donair sauce was creamy and mildly sweet but there wasn’t so much of it that it was cloying. I would definitely order this again if I found it on the menu at a subsequent visit.
The Black and Blue is made with Penticton’s Upper Bench blue cheese, blackberry compote, roasted local apples, and toasted malt. It’s always the perfect combination of sweet, salty, tangy, toasty, and smokey. Order one for dessert, or take one home for tomorrow’s breakfast. I promise that this is a flavour combination worth trying.
Even though this isn’t the most accessible of restaurants, the delicious food and drinks keep us coming back, though almost always in the summer time when we are able to enjoy more space and conversational volumes in the outdoor section.
As promised, here is a link to their website. It does get updated frequently to reflect their seasonal menu offerings.
http://www.badtattoobrewing.com/