Last Thursday, Novo Brazil Brewing opened its fifth public venue, a full-scale restaurant on the south end of San Diego Bay in Imperial Beach’s Bikeway Village development. It’s the eight-year-old Chula Vista-based company’s fourth satellite location to debut in the past three years, and its second largest to-date.
Outfitted in “modern beach décor”, the Imperial Beach restaurant sports a 7,500-square-foot dining room that can seat up to 283 people. In addition to a kitchen preparing a menu of casual pub-style grub, a good deal of which takes inspiration from Brazilian culinary traditions, an on-site nanobrewery has been installed to allow for creation of venue-exclusive beers.
And while there are two 23-foot LED-screen televisions for sports spectators, the best views are outside. Windowed roll-up doors give way to an open-air patio with a 180-degree view of the bay, including the downtown San Diego skyline and the Coronado Bridge. Patrons can also watch as bicyclists make their way along the Bayshore Bikeway.
“We are extremely excited to be part of the Imperial Beach community,” says Novo Brazil owner Tiago Carneiro. “We can’t wait to serve the area and keep a good relationship with people there while giving them a place where they can have an unforgettable experience enjoying award-winning beverages, great food and a breathtaking view while watching their favorite sports.”
Sixty-four taps dispense the aforementioned beverages, which include Novo Brazil’s beers as well as its lines of hard seltzers, recently introduced California Spritz ready-to-drink canned beer cocktails, and ironically alcoholic Nova Easy Kombucha offerings. The latter are a focal point of the company’s tasting room in Ocean Beach, a Newport Avenue space taken over in 2020 after former tenant Culture Brewing opted not to renew its lease.
Headquartered in Chula Vista’s Eastlake neighborhood, Novo Brazil has concentrated the majority of its expansion efforts in San Diego’s South Bay, opening a large brewpub in the Otay Ranch Town Center shopping mall in 2019, a tasting bar in National City’s Market on 8th retail collective in 2021, and now its Bikeway Village location.
Earlier this year, company officials shared their ambition for Novo Brazil to become the South Bay region’s “main brewery”. When asked what’s in store for the company ahead of the Imperial Beach opening, Carneiro shared that he and his team plan to open a whopping four new venues in 2023. Though he was not ready to share the exact locations of those future spots, this would mark the largest-ever single-year expansion for any local brewery in terms of the sheer number of locations.
Back in Imperial Beach, the number of brewery-owned venues has doubled from two to four in just the past three months with the arrival of Novo Brazil as well as a Palm Avenue brewpub from local restaurant group, Pizza Port, which made its debut in August. Those businesses join Mike Hess Brewing’s three-year-old indoor-outdoor tasting room and a Seacoast Drive bar-and-restaurant that’s been operated by Coronado Brewing since 2014.
Novo Brazil’s Imperial Beach location is open noon to 10 p.m., Monday through Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Live music will soon be offered and a kid’s play area figures to be added in the near future.
Novo Brazil Brewing Imperial Beach is located at 535 Florence Street