I’ve visited many restaurants before they open to the public to give sneak-peeks to readers, but few have been as impressive—even with missing furniture, construction dust and stray items strewn about—as Urge Common House, a multi-faceted brewpub opening to the public at 5 p.m. on Monday, April 10. The anchor hospitality venue of the North City multi-use development just north of California State University—San Marcos, the new spot is the third of 3 Local Brothers (3LB) restaurant group’s Urge restaurants (the second with brewing capabilities). It has a great deal to offer, including a wealth of activities, private spaces for rent and modern innovations.
Urge Common House builds off the 3LB team’s experience operating its gastropubs in Rancho Bernardo and Oceanside. The latter’s brewhouse is not visible to the public, so they made a point to change that this time around, taking a page out of Stone Brewing’s book. The floor-to-ceiling glass wall on the south wall of Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens in Escondido gives way to the brewery, guaranteeing visitors see and appreciate it. After checking in at Urge Common House’s host stand, guests will turn their attention to a window-wall looking in on the on-site production facility for 3LB’s Mason Ale Works, which is outfitted with 30-barrel fermenters being fed by a 15-barrel brewhouse. The brewery has been constructed with expansion in mind and will soon house oak barrels filled with maturing beer.
Just right of the brewery is a short, fluorescent-lit staircase leading to an eight-lane bowling alley equipped with a penny-encrusted White Russian bar serving 10 iterations of that classic tipple as well as a full cocktail menu and Mason Ale Works beers. The brewhouse has been situated so that a window behind that bar will provide visitors a view of action on brew-days, but the clientele here will likely expend most of their attention on rolling strikes and picking up spares. The lanes are outfitted in an onyx-colored custom surface and flanked by portraits of characters from The Big Lebowski and other bowling-inspired pieces from a local artist. There are plush leather couches for lounging, bowling balls decorated to look like billiard orbs and multimedia entertainment projected against the walls at the end of the alleys.
A private room with audio-visual capabilities can be accessed from the bowling alley. It is the smaller of two leasable spaces. The other is referred to as “The Library” and is a luxurious space with a fireplace, and dark-wood furniture and bookcases that will soon be stocked with dozens of volumes and punched up by ornamental pieces and a large oil painting. The library bar has a marbled top surreally lit by LED lights. On high-volume days like Friday or Saturday, this space might be opened to the public if not already rented for a private event.
The main dining room is split into a front and back section by a walkway lined by barrel-tops from the “Mason Snale Works” program. These areas are replete with reclaimed wood, hanging Edison bulbs and a natural palate punched up with touches of turquoise. Just beyond the primary dining areas is the main bar area, which offers its own array of seating options, including banquettes with custom-built ironwood tables, high-tops and, best of all, a lounge area with three sets of leather couches, each of which includes their own coffee-table and flat-screen television with remote controls for channel-surfing. The bar itself features 41 identical tap setups on either side (one is for coffee). 3LB’s Grant Tondro says previous Urge’s feature quality bars, but not enough seating, so he and his partners went to lengths to rectify that this time around.
In addition to indoor service, guests on Urge Common House’s patio can walk up to counter bars outside, accessible via garage-door-style windows which are uniquely setup to roll up and outdoors to provide extra shade and protection from inclement weather. The front-side of the patio sports four fire-pit tables and seating, while the back patio (which was still under construction when I visited on Wednesday) will have picnic tables, plus two crushed oyster shell-paved bocce ball courts as well as cornhole sets, and king-sized Jenga and Connect Four.
This concept was originally conceived as Urge: Craft Alley, and bound for a former gym facility in Vista. After two years of trying to make it happen, the project fell apart, forcing the 3LB team to abandon it. That lasted about a week. After reading about the project, a real estate agent sought 3LB out with the hopes of bringing the bowling- and bocce-bolstered brewpub to San Marcos. The rest is history and 3LB says it has worked out better in that they gained a few hundred square feet, were given a blank slate of a building to work with (it previously housed Stone’s barrel warehouse and a batting-cage facility, and was stripped down to the walls and support beams), have dynamic businesses around them with more coming soon, and have an invested development partner in Sea Breeze Properties.
Urge Common House is located at 255 Redel Road, and will open at 11:30 a.m. seven days a week. For information on renting public spaces or reserving bowling lanes, consult the restaurant’s website.