A Belgian IPA served on draft at the monk

Something about Ridgewood brings me back to earlier–dare I say simpler–times. It’s easy to imagine the storefronts along Fresh Pond Road as they looked decades ago–they probably haven’t changed too much since. And that’s why the monk, a new Belgian beer house that opened in December on the Ridgewood thoroughfare, seems right at home where it is, even though a place where beer is treated like fine wine sounds much more L-train.

There’s nothing trendy about the monk. It’s a bar whose sense of style and taste are firmly grounded, as indifferent to the whims of changing fashions as the character of the neighborhood it calls home. Televisions are verboten.