I had to go to Philadelphia this past weekend for a wedding and got away for a few hours to check out the Philly beer scene that’s made such a splash in the last few years. I had an excellent guide — Don Russell, who writes the weekly Joe Sixpack column for the Philadelphia Daily News and the author of a new book: Joe Sixpack’s Philly Beer Guide.

We checked out Monk’s Cafe, one of the first Belgian-style pubs in America and ended up at Triumph, Brewing of Philadelphia a new brewpub almost in the shadow of the Liberty Bell in downtown Philly, Later, I checked out Nodding Head, a cozy brewpub on the second floor of a downtown building and savored a perfect Berliner Weisse, made right there at the brewery at the rear of the pub. I’ll catch up with Nodding Head and Triumph on my next post.

Don Russell has it right: Philadelphia’s a real city, rough edges, urban mixes, sirens and cops and rapid transit. I’ve been twice to Boston, once to Washington D.C. in the the last three months. I can tell you this, these three East Coast downtowns are jumping, day and night. The great thing about downtown Philadelphia is that people of color don’t go home at sunset. They live there along with everyone else. In a Sunday afternoon walk around Broad Street in downtown, we saw just about every kind of humanity.

But me, Bay Area-bred, sniffed. Hah., Nobody from the Middle East? Where are they? Just then three people, two women in full Moslem dress and a guy with one of those little skull caps walked out of a Mexican restaurant. Hah, indeed. Philly gets an A.

On Saturday Don met my daughter, age 21, and I for lunch at the logical place in Philadelphia: Monk’s Cafe, 264 S. 16th St. Tom Peters and Fergus Carey opened Monk’s back in 1985, specializing in beer cuisine. That was a time when most Americans couldn’t easily locate Brussels, much less know anything about beer.

There’s a small dining room in front, a bar with six taps — Bear Republic Racer 5!, Blanche de Bruxelles, Chimay Triple, Geants Goliath Tripel, La Rulles Estivale, a Belgian blonde brewed with Orval yeast and finished with three American hops and Monks Cafe Flemish Sour, made in Belgium for Monk’s by Steenberge.

Beside and past the the bar, there are more tables. Then down a long hallway there’s the dimly lit, back bar, with 14 taps and a fairly extensive bottled beer selection behind refrigerated glass. It’s a narrow place that in New York they call a “floor-through,” narrow and extending all the way from front to alley. My daughter and I split a large pot of mussels cooked in Cantillon Geuze. Big pot, excellent, mussels were perfectly done and the Cantillon, which is dead sour, left a nice herbal note.

While Don ordered the Pulled Pork Sandwich, $8.95. It was huge and looked delicious. Don said it was. I also had a green salad, which came with a beer dressing that was tart-sweet-creamy. Excellent.

For beer, we started with Dupont Avril***1/2, a 3.5 percent, cloudy gold ale with malt up front and a stunning sour finish. It’s from the same Belgian brewery that makes Saison Dupont. We finished that with pints of Brooklynator Double Double Bock***1/2 from Brooklyn Brewing. A beautiful, malty, lip-smacking dark beauty. Very American in its way, with a bit of a hoppy finish. Very nice.

Like most Belgian-style cafes, there’s a “Beer Bible” with a couple of hundred bottled beer listings. It’s paper and customers can buy one for $3.

The Rating. **** This is the American original. The decor is fairly rough-hewn; the place is dark. I visited twice, both times it was incredibly crowded. They’ve opened a second cafe with an outdoor patio and big screen TV at 21st & Green Street.

Comparison: The Publick House in Brookline (Boston) is roomier, has an equally large beer selection; The Brickskeller in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. is more elegant, has an even wider selection. The Trappist here in Oakland is smaller, more intimate and can nearly match the selection. The Toronado in San Francisco is dingier, no doubt can match Monk’s bottle for bottle, tap for tap and then some. But they’re all excellent, worth a long trek to visit.

My daughter, who at 21 is pretty damn sophisticated has a slightly different opinon. She is, let us say, less generous than I am.  Here’s her photo and caption. Read the caption. It tells all from a 21-year-old’s honest eyes:

Photos: Top. Outside Monk’s Cafe

Bottom: The back bar at Monk’s, where the best beer can be found. That Brooklynator in the glass.

Photos by William Brand