A Tip for Dinning Out with Beer
Hitting the town on Friday night for a nice meal at your favorite restaurant? Here’s a quick tip (or two) to make sure you get the most of the restaurant’s beer list.
The LA Weekly’s Squid Ink food blog posted about basic food and beer pairing yesterday, and they bring up an excellent point about a dining-out pitfall that is easy to fall in to:
The habit of ordering a drink before you’ve looked at a dinner menu can undermine your pairing possibilities. (Unless you’re settling in for multiple rounds.) Anticipate your food cravings and order a beer for pairing to upgrade your dining experience…
You don’t have to be an experienced beer connoisseur to enjoy the magic of a beer-and-food pairing. All it takes is a basic understanding of the concepts (or a handy cheat-sheet) and some forethought.
If we’re visiting one of our usual haunts chances are good that we’ll have an idea of what we want to eat before walking through the doors, and in this case we order the first beer to match the entrée or appetizer. If it’s a menu we are not as familiar with or we’re not sure what’s for dinner the first round is generally something light, refreshing (especially if we walked to dinner) and palate-awakening. A pilsner, wit, or even a cider fit the bill nicely in this case.
Round two can then be ordered once you’ve had a chance to review both the menu and the beer-list more closely for the best possible match!
Check out the LA Weekly post for some more basic food-pairing ideas, including a pairing suggestion from Downtown’s excellent Belgian beer bar Little Bear.
What’s your favorite beer + food pairing tip?
Source: LA Weekly - Beer Pairing: Little Bear Grilled Cheese + Taps Biere de Garde
You mention it in your article picture, but one of my favorite pairings is spicy mexican food – perhaps spicy carnitas – with an imperial stout. The combination of spicy meat, corn, and the sweet roasted notes of an imperial stout can create a sort of chocolate mole effect. Is it lunch time yet?
That sounds excellent! I so rarely find a Mexican food place that has a decent beer selection though! I will definitely be trying this next time I make carnitas though.
Loving the image today. While “burger tacos” are something I’ve considered, I have to admit I never thought about trying to make “sushi sausage” or “sandwich rice.”
Joking aside, I have taken to saying “just water to start” when the waiter descends well before I’ve had a chance to look at anything. And very often I find myself choosing the beer I really want, then picking a meal I know (or at least hope) will go well with it!
I also end up ordering food to match the beer I want easily as often as ordring beer to match the food.
One of my favorite parings is a sour beer with greasy or heavier foods. The acidity of the beer cuts through the fat of the meat and elevates both. A sour + Chicharrónes is pretty amazing.