Local Pub and Teahouse at 15

Arts District restaurant is 15 and as local as its name.

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The Local Pub and Teahouse has a four-year waiting list.

That isn’t to get a table at the restaurant, which celebrated its 15th anniversary last Halloween at the corner of Grand Avenue and Beekman Street. It is to join the restaurant’s popular Mug Club.

Currently, 220 individuals are in this rarefied group, each of whom pays $75 a year to drink as many 20-ounce mugs of beer as they can. Once they’ve been in the club for five years, the annual fee is good for as many 25-ounce mugs of beer as they can consume; they also are entitled to get their name engraved on their glass mug.

Despite that popularity, that is not their best attraction, said Operations and Financial Officer Theresa Stewart.

“What is truly unique about us, is that we really just cater to the locals in the neighborhood,” she said. And it is about as family-friendly as it comes. Each Halloween, the restaurant’s anniversary, children who come in full costume with a parent get a free dinner.

Set amidst the art galleries, coffee shops and row of homes in the Beekman Street Arts District, the Teahouse is typically jammed to the rafters, as one first-time visitor learned on a cold afternoon on the first Friday of February. 

“We’re in a quiet neighborhood, we don’t do any advertising, so you might not normally hear much about us,” added Stewart.

The accolades in area publications would beg to differ, and the Local is one of those off-the-beaten path gems that you have to experience for yourself.

Owned by architects Michael R. Phinney and Jonathan Haynes, of the adjacent Phinney Design Group, the Teahouse was the first craft beer bar in Saratoga, Stewart said. And though there are 15 craft beer lines at the bar, she says, there are plenty of other reasons to go to the restaurant, such as the chili, burgers, Shepherd’s pie and fish and chips that are all on the menu.