So, anyway, I guess I’m an idiot, but I didn’t even really know it was possible for a restaurant to like “brew” or “manufacture” or whatever these kinds of drinks right on site. I guess I assumed that when it comes to soft drinks, you’re typically talking about a factory setting where the stuff is brewed up in huge batches and then shipped out to restaurants or bottled or whatever. But the NuWAY creates its own root beer right there on site, a fresh batch every day and I was actually really blown away with it. Root beer has always been . . . well, I’ve always kind of appreciated it without enjoying it if that makes any sense. I appreciate the distinctiveness of the flavor and the fact that it’s a beverage that isn’t afraid to cut the sweetness and hint at bitterness. It seems that just about every beverage you run across today increasingly focuses on sugar. Pop is way sweeter these days than it used to be; and we’ve all heard plenty of rants about how wussy coffee is these days; and these days it seems like you can essentially order any alcoholic beverage you want with a “tini” on the end of it. But, while I appreciate it, it’s just not the thing I typically order. Well, I’m telling you the truth: sampling the root beer at the NuWAY put me on like a six month jag of root beer being my default pop almost exclusively. That kind of faded because, nope, I never found anything as good as the NuWAY. It just has a really delicious distillation of the root beer flavor; it doesn’t have the weird aftertaste of a lot of root beers and it’s wonderfully refreshing. I kind of thought, at the time, that maybe I was just rediscovering that I loved root beer, but it turns out that the NuWAY root beer really is better than root beer generally is so I’m really kicking myself at this point for not grabbing a couple of their two liters to bring home. Well, whatever. The burger was just OK and I didn’t like the onion rings, but if you’re ever in Wichita, stop by the NuWAY and discover what root beer is supposed to be. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – restaurant continues to brew root beer on site rather than buy from a wholesaler and it pays off with the most delicious, refreshing and satisfying root beer I’ve ever encountered. 3 ½ stars.