After a decade of slinging suds, Pompano Beach’s 26 Degree Brewing Co. is poised to debut its first in-house restaurant — with help from a major Miami tastemaker whose name is synonymous with comfort food.

Restaurateur Danny Serfer (from locally beloved Blue Collar and Michelin-recommended Mignonette) is the unlikely force behind the new 26 Degree Brewery & Kitchen, set to open in mid-April, months ahead of 26 Degree’s 10th birthday in September.

We say “unlikely” because, with all due respect to 26 Degree, why would the Miami-based Serfer care about a northern Broward County brewery? That answer, Serfer tells the South Florida Sun Sentinel, starts with the rekindling of an old friendship.

Thirty years after becoming middle-school buddies at Davie’s NSU University School, Serfer and 26 Degree cofounder Yonathan Ghersi had grown apart. Then, in 2018, they got reacquainted after realizing they not only lived near each other on Bay Harbor Islands, but their kids went to the same preschool.

“It turned out our kids are really super-tight friends,” says Serfer, who serves as 26 Degree’s consultant but not its chef. “So I started hanging out with Yonathan more and now we play tennis three times a week.”

Sometime in 2019, Ghersi says he asked Serfer to help him grow 26 Degree’s revenue streams beyond craft beer with a full-scale restaurant, but the pandemic and badly needed upgrades sidelined their collaboration until 2023.

“The biggest question we’d always get on the phone was, ‘Do you have food?’ But we never had a kitchen,” Ghersi says. “It’s not exactly getting easier for breweries to be successful, so our prime location made perfect sense for a restaurant.”

The idea is to feature dishes inspired by Old Florida seafood eateries and English and Irish pubs.

26 Degree’s culinary glow-up coincides with Ghersi’s two-year makeover of the brewery, which in late March debuted a 40-seat patio addition facing Atlantic Boulevard. Ghersi also spent $614,000 converting part of the brewery into a kitchen, with a ventilation hood, new air conditioning and appliances “under supervision from Danny, who was basically like, ‘With this menu, this is the equipment we need,’” Ghersi explains.

Serfer, who’s built a reputation cooking comfort eats as cozy and familiar as a favorite sweater, opened his acclaimed upscale Miami-Dade County diner Blue Collar in 2012 and Mignonette oyster bar in 2014, following stints at Chef Allen’s in Aventura and 15th Street Fisheries in Fort Lauderdale.

All this inspired Serfer’s in-progress menu, which will feature Irish Banger Stew, braised oxtail and roast beef handhelds, savory lamb hand pies and fried alligator bites — all designed to be paired with 26 Degree’s pints.

There will also be mussels and conch salad, both dishes “that are doing so well at Blue Collar, I put them on at 26 Degrees,” he says. For that same reason, he added crispy gator bites, “because they were really popular at 15th Street back in the day and now.”

Along with smash burgers, giant pretzels and charcuterie plates, there’s also the Pompano Beef Dip, a cousin to Chicago Italian beef combining roast beef and pulled braised oxtail, topped with housemade giardiniera and paired with an oxtail dipping jus. And there’s a hand pie stuffed with lamb, peas, chicken, leeks and prosciutto created by newly appointed chef Fergus Conneely, formerly of 3 Sons Brewing Co. in Dania Beach.

“Paramount to what we’re doing is getting people to spend more time at 26 Degree,” Serfer says. “A restaurant casts a much wider net. Here’s a huge segment of people who aren’t drinking, or aren’t old enough. So it has to stand on its own as a great restaurant.”

Adding a restaurant helps confront the harsh realities of running a brewery now, as craft beer’s once-mighty golden age has dimmed in the wake of oversaturation, declining taproom numbers and evolving consumer tastes, Ghersi says.

“A taproom is great for revenue, but folks have to be entertained enough to come back,” he says. “We’re in this location with ample parking where other people already go out to dinner, and it doesn’t make sense to depend on just beer anymore.”

26 Degree Brewery & Kitchen is expected to open in mid-April inside 26 Degree Brewing Co., 2600 E. Atlantic Blvd., Pompano Beach. Go to 26Brewing.com or call 954-532-6964.