The most excited evangelists for the new paradigm (let's
call it «craft
beer» for the ease of discussion) were confident that a lot of the values they held were shared by the wider population — that craft
beer was objectively higher
quality, that these little breweries, because they were local, weresomehow morally superior, that the movement was animated by values and ethics and was not merely the evolution of a consumer category.
Now that oysters - and -
beer hall has become a mini-empire, with its own bread shop (Publican
Quality Bread) and butcher (Publican
Quality Meats), a raucous Wicker Park offshoot (right next to another of Kahan's restaurant group's runaway successes, the taco bar Big Star)
called Publican Anker, and — perhaps most unlikely of all — Publican Tavern, a pub inside O'Hare Airport.