The Halfway Club A Semifinalist For James Beard’s Best New Bar

The Halfway Club’s owners Greg Quinn and Ethan Terry must be pretty pleased with their Crocker-Amazon bar.

A mere two weeks after celebrating its one-year anniversary, the co-owners of the family-friendly establishment received news that they were semifinalists for a James Beard Foundation Award in the Best New Bar category. The national honor recognizes exceptional talent and achievement in the culinary arts, hospitality, media and broader food system.

“It’s really wild,” Terry said. “[I’m] really happy to see that the foundation is taking a chance on the idea of a neighborhood bar. Coming out of the craft cocktail swing of the early 2000s and mid-2000s, I feel like the pendulum always swings back and forth and going back the other way of neighborhood spots I think they’re so important.”

What they believe led to their nomination was not only their midwest-inspired comfort food — crab rangoon deviled eggs, for example — and specialty cocktails — notably a Wisconsin old fashioned — but their approach to top-notch hospitality, which Terry described as cozy and somewhere where “you can almost feel like you’re at home.”

“We're really just trying to run a good neighborhood bar and restaurant,” Quinn said. “We're not doing anything that we thought would get us that kind of attention but it's pretty cool. What we've done here is build a community and give people a place to go where they're comfortable and they meet and talk to their neighbors.”

The nomination comes as a slight surprise to some patrons like John Da Bomb but not for its quality of service or offerings but for its location in the city.

“Good for them,” Da Bomb, who has been going to this location across multiple different owners, said. “I don’t know how people heard about this place because we’re out in the distant part of San Francisco but they deserve it. They’re doing a good job.”

For first-time customer Gabriel, who did not wish to provide a last name, the bar had a cool vibe and hoped they win. He also urges future patrons to try “everything you don’t get anywhere else.”

“It has a really good vibe,” Gabriel said. “It feels like it’s been here for 10 years.” 

While they won't know if they make it to the next round until April, the nomination, which Quinn jokingly said he would have bet every dollar he had when they first opened that they would never see their bar and James Beard in the same sentence, is credited to the community and they hope to celebrate them in the near future.

“We would do something fun just to thank the people who helped create this place,” Quinn said. “Ethan and I are the owners but this restaurant is the result of the work of dozens of people, from our staff to the artists that helped create this space, to the contractors that built this place out and then, of course, the community we serve and the regulars here. This is the efforts of a really large group of people.”