Whether they hate it or love it, everyone agrees this country was built on hard work, ingenuity, and about 25 or so kinds of sedimentary rock. Honoring the first two: Meridian Pint.

Set to pop next Thursday, much-anticipated Pint's a bastion of nostalgic Americana, with a basement boasting taps from which you can pour your own beers built into certain tables, and walls/bartops with blueprints of industrial symbols like trains & bridges, plus a window-filled top floor with a long dark wood bar and a propaganda-ish mural of workers toasting a Rosie-the-Riveter-type sitting atop beer stills, which explains why Rosie's so rosy. Brew-pouring mechanisms are pretty inventive, including a gravity-poured, dry-hopped cask of Oliver's ESB, and the downstairs bar's dual-temperature setup, with a leftside tap-tree pouring lagers at 35-40 degrees, and a rightside jig spouting stouts/porters/ales kept slightly warmer; the 24 impressive American craft drafts range from Cali's Lagunitas New Dogtown Pale Ale to Jersey's Climax ESB -- unlike Climax ESP, which allows your GF to see into a future that'll never exist. Food's "American contemporary", with apps like beer battered, chipotle mayo-doused fried calamari, sandwiches like a half smoke with pork chilli and beer battered onion rings, and main course absurdity like a double cut, brined pork chop with rhubarb cider sauce, wheat-beer braised short ribs with mac' n' cheese, and a hearty New York strip, which is actually pretty disappointing, what with the topless-only-ness.

They're also only the tenth spot in the country with the aforementioned table-mounted double taps, meaning you can self-serve beer after sliding your card to the server, who retains the power to cut off your flow should you go spouting off all sedimental.