On Monday we had a meeting on the site of the new Eataly in New York City.

Mike from JVNW - the folks who are building our 3.5 bbl brewhouse and 7 bbl unitanks - came in from the west coast.

Brooks, who will be the onsite brewer, came in from Rome, Italy. Brooks in currently training with Leo from Birra Del Borgo over there and will train with us at Dogfish closer to the opening date. Brooks was born in the States, but moved with his family to Italy when he was ten years old. He is bilingual, but dreams in Italian. He brought some beautiful Italian peppercorns over with him that we plan to use in our Eataly summer beer.

We also met with the build-out construction managers and Riva, the WonderWoman who runs new project development for Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich (B&B Hospitality).

The night before our meeting, we all ate at Otto, and drank a lot of Stoudt's Pils and a great red wine from Calabria where my folks, folks, folks (thatd make them my great-grandparents, I think) were born.

Mariah and I are still recovering from the NYC Half Marathon we ran that day.

One of the highlights was meeting a woman at the starting line whose husband is a huge Dogfish lover and was especially stoked for this Eataly NYC project.

So are we.