So ... many ... beers. If you think the Starbucks menu can be intimidating, flipping through the pages of The Freakin' Frog's beer menu will blow your mind. It's no surprise that the bar won the Weekly Reader's Choice Award for best beer selection. You could visit the establishment regularly for years and never drink the same thing twice. Perusing the list, I see that each beer even has its country of origin listed, which makes the menu read like the entire U.N. roster. Even Lithuania has a beer on there.
My friends and I opt to sample the apricot beer from the bar's ever-changing taps. The concoction tastes like apricots, and it tastes like beer, yet somehow manages to taste good, as well. I'd like to congratulate the brilliant chemist who made that combination work.
We sit at a table in the center of the small room and absorb a few nostalgic minutes of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Rather than the usual assortment of televised sports, The Freakin' Frog shows movies on one large screen, which I find infinitely preferable. I've never been excited about watching sports, but seeing a young, bikini-clad Phoebe Cates climb out of that swimming pool in slow motion makes the beer go down even more smoothly.
The place isn't packed, but it seldom is. It's a hole-in-the-wall with a nondescript white façade that makes the place obscure enough to keep the riffraff out. The beer menu brings in diehard aficionados like my friends, and the bar's proximity to UNLV brings in the occasional college kid.
From the neighboring table, one kid asks us if we're fellow UNLV students. He's there with his parents, a nice couple visiting from Vietnam, who are clearly urging their son to be more outgoing and make friends. We assist by inviting the three to join us.
My companions, both social butterflies, attempt to coax the bashful student from his quiet cocoon, leaving me to entertain his parents, who don't speak a word of English. Shy myself, I find it hard enough to break the ice in my own language.
"Phai chau la nghe si khong?" the father asks me, pointing to a sketch of Donald Duck I'd left on a cocktail napkin.
I can fake Spanish or French to some extent, and a Hungarian graduate student named Sabolch once taught me enough of his language to start a bar fight in Budapest, but when it comes to Asian dialects, I'm completely lost. His son explains that he's asking if I'm an artist.
"Only in bars," I answer.
The rest of the night, I converse with the old couple through Disney drawings and hand gestures, with occasional translations by their son. I share my sweet-potato fries (a Freakin' Frog specialty) and they one-up me with a round of Samichlaus Biers—a pricey Austrian import that, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the strongest lager in the world. It's a sipping beer thick enough to chew and strong enough to render our linguistic differences obsolete.
Between the Austrian beer, the Vietnamese conversation and the American cult classic in the background, it's truly an international evening at The Freakin' Frog. Next time I think I'll try having a conversation in Portuguese, maybe over a round of those Lithuanian beers.
The Freakin' Frog Where: 4700 S. Maryland Parkway. Info: 597-9702
At long last, Matthew Scott Hunter has a valid reason to drink. You can e-mail him at
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