PITTSBORO — Where typical community breweries might offer trivia nights and live music, one of Pittsboro’s newest drinking holes has brewed up an events calendar with a bicultural twist.
The Plant’s bmc brewing hosted the first of many lotería — or Mexican bingo — nights last Thursday on 213 Lorax Lane with about a dozen participating customers. Owned by master brewer John Rice and his wife Carmen, bmc brewing first opened last September and now sells an assortment of beers, ciders, cookies and — beginning this week — wine.
The idea, according to Rice, came to them from the co-owners of Carolina Cravings, Yeraldyn Martinez and Iliana Escalante-Palacios, who bake the brewery’s cookies using their spent grain flour.
“We knew we wanted to do some sort of community game night, and … the owner there recommended maybe we should do lotería because it’s a little more fun than American bingo,” he told the News + Record. “It’s more picture-oriented, the numbers, and so we decided we would do that.”
Much like traditional bingo, lotería is a game of chance — but instead of numbers, lotería uses a deck of cards, each with a different image. Callers (or cantores, literally “singers”) shuffle the deck, draw cards and read them out while players mark off the corresponding pictures on their 4 by 4 boards (known as tablas) until they reach a winning pattern, at which point, they’ll yell “lotería.”
Thursday’s event at bmc brewing consisted of four games. Woods Charter Spanish teacher Vanessa Costa called out the cards in English and Spanish so that speakers of both languages could participate. The game night also offered prizes for winners and empanadas from Empanadas RD North Carolina food truck.
“We want to do this again — at least once a month, if not twice a month,” Rice said. “ … So we’d probably just do it the first and third Thursdays of each month.”
Beyond lotería night, bmc brewing has also partnered with Mexican food truck Ta Contento and Baila Beats Academy to offer Taco Tuesday and salsa dancing lessons for $5 every first Tuesday of each month. The next lesson will take place on Feb. 1.
“They may or may not bring the food truck depending on you know, the weather and on how many people we expect to show up,” Rice said, “but we’ll have lessons from 7 to 8 p.m. and then social dancing from 8 to 9:30 p.m., of course once this particular wave of COVID passes.”
For more information about either event, visit bmc brewing’s Facebook page or website at bmcbrewing.com.
“It (lotería) was a great time,” Rice said, “and we hope people come from the community and enjoy themselves.”
Reporter Victoria Johnson can be reached at victoria@chathamnr.com.