Sideward Brewing (https://sidewardbrewing.com/) is a brewery-restaurant on the corner of Bumby Avenue and Robinson Street in Orlando’s Milk District. It shares a building with Stasio’s Italian Deli and Market, one of my favorite places to eat in the entire city, and the two casual eateries share an insanely tight and crowded parking lot as well.
My dozens of readers may remember that my wife and I don’t drink, but I’ve been wanting to try the food at Sideward Brewing for years. Everything is scratch-made in house, and I have cool, trusted friends who are regulars who rave about it. They also brew and can their own house-made root beer, and that was the final nudge we needed to make it over there on a recent Sunday in the late afternoon, before it closed at 6 PM. Sunday is the optimal day to go there, since Stasio’s is closed, and the parking lot won’t be as hectic and dangerous as it usually is. Seriously, I’d rather brave the Trader Joe’s/Shake Shack parking lot in Winter Park than the Stasio’s/Sideward parking lot on a Saturday.
Sideward has indoor and outdoor tables, and they all have wooden chairs. The outdoor area is covered, and the tables are four-tops, nicely spaced out. The indoor tables are long, with eight seats at each. We sat indoors, the only two people at our long table. It is a family-friendly place, and plenty of people brought little kids and dogs that were all quiet and well-behaved. You order your food and beer at the counter, and they have a cooler full of canned beers to go. They even have a house merlot, for anyone who prefers wine to beer.
We each started with a house-made Riff & Milo root beer, which is named after two dogs who I’m sure are the best boys. The cans are $5 each, but they are 16 ounces, the equivalent of a pint. I didn’t think twice about paying that price for getting to try a pint of a whole new root beer, to say nothing of supporting a local establishment. The ingredients included cane sugar, brown sugar, honey, vanilla, and natural and artificial flavors. We both thought there was a strong wintergreen taste to this root beer, so I wouldn’t be surprised if wintergreen extract is one of those flavors.
I’m sure their beers are tasty and the highest quality as well.
My wife loves boiled peanuts (which I call “bald peanuts” to fit in in the South), and I can’t think of any other restaurants in Orlando that serve them. She got a nice-sized serving of steaming hot “traditional” bald peanuts, but you can also request them with Korean BBQ, buffalo, sweet heat, Nashville spice, or spicy jalapeno seasoning. She hates anything spicy, so traditional was the safest way to go.
I appreciated that they included two cups — one for the bald peanuts and one for discarded shells.
We both love a good soft pretzel, so we shared an order of two soft pretzels, which were fluffy with lightly crispy, crackly exteriors and a light dusting of crunchy salt crystals, and so, so buttery. They were like the Auntie Anne’s pretzels I love, that I only treat myself to when I’m at an airport and my flight is delayed, but better. In fact, I would argue that this is the best pretzel in the Orlando area. Yes, even better than the big one at Hollerbach’s German Restaurant in Sanford. I said what I said! Take my word for it: there are definitely two in there. The second one is underneath the top one.
The pretzels were served with a grainy sweet mustard called Punks mustard (I’m assuming it was made with Sideward’s Punks in the Waiting Room lager), warm and gooey beer cheese (excellent), and wonderful pimento cheese topped with some thin-sliced pickled peppers. I loved both cheese dips, but these pretzels are so good that they don’t even need any accoutrements.
A muffuletta is one of my favorite sandwiches, and I was excited to try Sideward’s version. A muffuletta is a classic New Orleans Italian sandwich that originated at the Central Grocery on Decatur Street in the French Quarter. I’ve been lucky enough to have the real deal there a few times, but I haven’t been back to New Orleans since 2001. Sideward’s muff isn’t served on the same huge, round loaf of French bread topped with sesame seeds, but the salami, mortadella, capicola, provolone cheese, and olive tapenade came on fluffy focaccia bread. While some places serve a hot muff, I prefer mine chilled, as Central Grocery does theirs. Luckily, Sideward’s muff is tangy, salty, and cool. 
By the way, the olive salad is usually a combination of olives (green, black, sometimes kalamata), pickled giardiniera vegetables, onions, carrots, celery, and hot peppers chopped up and mixed with herbs and olive oil. You can buy the Central Grocery’s own olive salad expensively, but it is easy to make your own, especially if you start out with a jar of giardiniera. I love it on multiple kinds of sandwiches.
My wife ordered a caprese sandwich that she was kind enough to share with me. It was delicious! As good as the muff, if not better. It included house-made pesto, fresh mozzarella, roasted grape tomatoes, roasted red peppers, and balsamic-dressed arugula on a ciabatta roll that looked and tasted very fresh, with a crackly exterior crust. Usually I’m disappointed in ciabatta compared to focaccia, a nice crusty semolina roll, or even a soft hoagie roll. Many of them are difficult to tear with your teeth due to a hard and chewy outer crust, but this might have been the nicest ciabatta I’ve ever had. 
My wife absolutely does not share my sandwich obsession, but she appreciates a good caprese salad or sandwich (especially when I pick out the tomatoes for her, as I did here). She was really gung-ho about this one, and I was so glad she was in a sharing mood. It was perfect in every way!
I got cool, creamy, refreshing Gram’s potato-egg salad as a side, and it did not disappoint. I am convinced that hard-boiled eggs make any potato salad better. 
Sideward serves a beautiful-looking breakfast burrito on Sundays from the time it opens at 11 AM, but we were too late for that. It didn’t matter, since we had plenty to choose from and enjoyed everything.
I’ve been wanting to return to Sideward Brewing for another meal, but haven’t had a chance, and I really wanted to get this review out there. I keep thinking about those pretzels and how comforting they would be in this unseasonably chilly weather, especially with all those accoutrements. I highly recommend them, along with the root beer and both sandwiches we tried. Yes, even sharing a wall and a (stressful) parking lot with Stasio’s, home of my favorite sandwich in all of Orlando (the namesake Stasio Italian sub), I would still consider Sideward’s muffuletta and caprese to be destination-worthy sandwiches. And if you like beer, I always hear it is one of the best breweries in Orlando. Check it out! And if you’ve already checked it out, what is your regular food order, and what beers do you recommend?
The Saboscrivner 