RESTAURANTS : Heritage Brewing Co. Is Hopping With Campus Pub Atmosphere, Hearty Fare

March Madness. That’s what the NCAA calls it--the college basketball fever that won’t subside until this weekend when the national championship is decided. Last weekend I experienced some of the frenzy while watching the regional finals at Heritage Brewing Co. in Dana Point, Orange County’s only brew-pub. The place was jammed, and the decibel level rose to the pain threshold with every basket made. Things were plenty loud during the timeouts, too.

Heritage Brewing Co. looks pretty much as you might expect--a college-campus bar with little in the way of embellishment. It’s really just a large, rectangular room, with a few wooden tables, a long slinky bar, some copper-topped mini-bars in the room’s center, and a few ceiling fans twirling overhead. Off to one side, there are some hotly contested dart boards and some rowdy foosball players.

The young, party-going bunch who fill this place look as you’d expect, too: lots of bulky men swaggering around with hunched shoulders, lots of gorgeous women. The only surprise is finding a place like this in usually restrained Dana Point, which is what one might call off, off campus.

The brew-pub phenomenon is nothing new to Southern California, but it hasn’t exactly caught on big yet. The City of Angels brew-pub in Santa Monica, for instance, recently went out of business after being open less than two years.

Perhaps the beer itself is to blame. Many brew-pubs don’t make lager beer, which traditionally is fermented slowly from the top down; instead they stick to ales, which require fewer hops and less storage time. The result often is dull-tasting, and once the novelty wears off the crowds tend to thin down. It’s too soon to tell whether the Heritage’s popularity is going to last, but right now it looks like a hit.

Heritage brews its beers in small batches, using a seven-day fermentation process. Four different types are offered: pale ale, golden ale, Irish red and something called Dana porter. Each one is progressively darker and seemingly sweeter. I found them relatively flavorless, except for the tastes of malt and sugar. The folks who make Urquell and Kirin aren’t going to lose any sleep over this stuff just yet.

The Dana porter was certainly the best of the four. It had a fair amount of character and a pleasant bitterness mixed in with its syrupy sweetness. The others had very little to distinguish them other than the color. They were slightly sweet, on the bland side, and extremely cold when they arrived, the better to make them go down unnoticed. Once they were warm I couldn’t drink them.

I have fewer complaints about the food. The menu is simple and most of the dishes go down a lot more easily than the beer.

You may want to begin with a crock of homemade chili, made with the Dana porter. The chili is meaty and messy, intensely flavored with cumin, and topped with cheese and green onion. The clam chowder isn’t bad, either. It’s creamy with lots of celery and bacon.

All entrees come with soup or salad, and among those choices, I’d go with the house Caesar. It isn’t a traditional Caesar--there are no anchovies--but it’s garlicky and lemony, with big croutons and fresh lettuce. I’d steer clear of some of the appetizers, especially stuffed potato skins or the Buffalo wings. The potato skins were dry, overly cheesy and almost inedible. The Buffalo wings (spicy, as opposed to mild) were oily and overcooked; the only thing I could taste was cayenne pepper.

Among the entrees is an English mixed grill. It’s advertised as banger, bratwurst and knackwurst, and indeed what I got was a plate with three sausages. Each was barely tasty; like the brews, I couldn’t tell one from the other. They floated on top of onion confit , alongside some good sauteed green beans.

You might try old-fashioned Mulligan stew, served with Irish soda bread, or one of the house potpies. These dishes are hearty, enormous and tasty.

Sandwiches are another item popular with this crowd. The Heritage burger, a third of a pound of good, fresh sirloin on a grilled bun, came out juicy and tender. I had mine with Cheddar and an order of good, curly fries. Beef on wick--like Buffalo wings, a takeoff on an Upstate New York specialty--is high quality, wafer-thin roast beef on a salted bun, with the proper juices intact. If the place ever quiets down I might just go back for one.

Heritage Brewing Co. is inexpensive. Twelve-ounce beers are $1.75 to $1.95. Pints are $2.25 to $2.50. Appetizers are $1.75 to $4.95. Entrees are $5.50 to $8.95. Sandwiches are $3.90 to $5.95.

HERITAGE BREWING CO.

24921 Dana Point Harbor Drive, Dana Point

(714) 240-2060

Open Sunday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to midnight, Friday and Saturday until 2 a.m.

American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted.