Franklin's Brewpub and Island Style

Franklin's Restaurant and Brewery is a great brewpub (with an attached general store) featuring some great food and even better beers. Located in Hyattsville, MD its just a short ride down rte. 1 from College Park and the University of Maryland.  Inside you're welcomed with great smells and a nice bright restaurant.  The food is excellent with every selection I've made (from the burger to the wings to the carolina style pork bbq) being fantastic.  To complement these great offerings the beer list features around 10 brews made on premise with rotational styles and sometimes a guest beer from another instate brewpub.  Of the three beers I have had all were to style, beautiful in appearance, paired well with food and most of all were delicious.  The scotch ale was strong and malty (yum!), the belgian style beer (don't remember the name) was perky and tasteful and the "miami weiss" wheat beer was interesting and pleasent with some honey character. I can't wait to go back to try more delicious styles and was happy to see that they have several more new styles soon to come out.  The general store also offers a fantastic but pricey selection of beer.  While there might be a bit wider choices than local liquor stores the prices for belgians and big beers also come in at a few dollars more. The store also offers a wide range of games and knick-knacks and is an entertaining post-meal stop.

Just a short jump over to Mt. Ranier Maryland and you can find an excellent dessert to complement this fine dinner and beer experience (if you choose to skip on Franklin's delicious bread pudding).  Island Style is an organic caribbean ice cream shop inconspicuously located in a small house like shop.  The main event for beer lovers is the Stout ice cream.  Alternating chewy and icy the stout ice cream suffers from the usual beer ice cream problem of increased water but does so sparingly and the icy parts are almost a special treat rather than the annoyance of some Guinness flavored freezes I've had.  While the cones seemed rather stale (perhaps a low turnover during the winter) the ice cream itself (at least the Stout I chose and the Chocolate and Butter Pecan of my girlfriend and her sister) where excellent and very reasonably priced.  It takes a lot to keep a restaurant open 6 years and get rave reviews in the Washington Post but this place knows what its doing with Ice Cream (and in the case of the Stout, beer).