King of the Philadelphia Craft Beer Scene

Did you read that title? Let me say it again:

"King of the Philadelphia Craft Beer Scene"

Seems like it should be someone pretty significant. Probably someone who has the admiration of their peers. Got any guesses?

Well, it's evidently Michael Naessens, owner of Eulogy Belgian Tavern. That's what a Eulogy ad in a City Paper ad insert for the recent Philadelphia Craft Beer Festival says. "Michael Naessens may only be a Belgian Knight or [sic] the Chevalerie du Fourquet des Brasseurs in Belgium, BUT he is the King of the Philadelphia Craft Beer Scene." No kidding.

I like Eulogy. It's a nice place, and I got great service and beer the last couple of times I was there. I recommend it to friends headed for Old City, and likely will continue to do so.

But "King of Philadelphia Craft Beer Scene"? In a city like this, full of excellent bars with great beer selections and microbreweries with delicious fresh local favorites...I don't think there can be one king. It might be well for Naessens to recall that Philly is where Americans decided that they had no use for a king...and where Tom Paine argued that monarchy was a fraud.

Eulogy might be better served by less grandiloquent claims. But given that the same ad claims that Naessens himself, clad "in a knight's outfit," appears in a photo of what is obviously a desk ornament-sized suit of armor on a wooden base...that doesn't seem likely.