The Tavern at Silver Pines

This is a Summer Camp article written AT GREAT SPEED! It has not yet been edited, so apologies for the copious typos and small text issues.

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"The Tavern" was, in fact, the ex-banquet hall of Baron Von Ottengarde's great house. It smelled of beer and warmth, of company and good food, and the air was full of happy chatter. It immediately put Iris on edge.

— Extract from "The Last Adventure"

The Tavern at Silver Pines is a Tavern-Restaurant housed in the Silver Pines retirement village. As well as serving the residents of the retirement village three meals a day, it also welcomes outside guests. It's starting to get a local reputation, especailly in the Longleaf Village, as home of some of the finest and most exotic cuisines in the region.

Menu

Some standard menu items are always available in the tavern. For example, there are always eggs available for breakfast in some form or other, and always some kind of stew for supper.

Apart from these familiar stand-bys, the chef at The Tavern, one Okolo Minbasa, is full of daily surprises. An excellent trained chef and ever-curious about new dishes and cuisines, Okolo lays on gnomish foods one day, and elven foods the next.
The standard menu can be read on the parchments distributed to the tables, but the daily menu is chalked on a black-painted board above the bar.

Decor

The Tavern was originally a huge feasting room, from back when the main building of Silver Pines Retirement Village was the mansion of Baron van Ottensgarde.

When the Halfhammer's took posession of the building, Lottie Halfhammer converted the dining hall into a tavern-style room to make her customers - largely retired Adventurers - feel more at home. Lottie Halfhammer concepted the restaurant as "Inn Chique", using natural materials and alluding to the fashions of traditional taverns with a more refined feel and atmosphere.

For example, the customary straw-strewn floors of a rustic tavern have been replaced with woven river-reed mats, which are beaten out daily to keep the dust at bay. Most of the seating is arranged in a classic tavern manner, with clusters of 4-6 rough-wood chairs around small wooden tables. The light fixtures are custom-crafted from old swords, now well past use, which have been bent into stylish chandeliers supporting candles. In addition, a few booths have been set up, padded with red-stained leather, to provide more secluded seating.

Near the door to the kitchen is a long, tavern-style bar, cut from a single huge pine trunk; the knotted, exposed grain is polished to a shine. A chalk board above the bar lists the menu, which changes daily apart from a few stalwarts like eggs for breakfast and stew for dinner. If a bard is passing through the village they are often invited to play at SilverPines. They set up either near the fireplace or near the bar depending on the season.

Opening Hours: The tavern serves three meals a day:

Breakfast (9-11am)

Lunch (1-3pm)

Supper (7-9pm)

Drinks are also available outside those hours.