Beer with food

For those waiting for the second instalment of the barley wine seminar proceedings I'm afraid you'll have to wait till tomorrow. Trying to accurately portray what others have said turns out to be a whole lot more difficult than just spurting out my own incoherent thoughts. Today I need to be in the kitchen for a while so I have to blog quickly.

Food though; we talk about beer with food and beer and food matching. Great idea that is seldom executed very well. I know we're generally rubbish at it here and I'm not sure how we can improve. One of the problems we have is a constantly changing menu and cask selection. Updating the beer blackboard every day and getting to the point of updating the menu is as much as we get to.

I've always been interested in good food. I don't blog about it here very much but have openly admitted to being a food snob. Indeed, I entered the industry primarily interested in food, not beer. That's changed quite a lot these days as beer seems to have taken over my life, but I still have a keen interest in food and would like to see the two working together more. We visited the Restaurant Show at Earls Court for a couple of hours on Tuesday. It's run it's course for us at the moment, it seems to present nothing new, although the economic situation over the last 2 years has dented the new innovation that we go to find. Certainly the size of the exhibition is much smaller than previously.

Every year we have visited the restaurant show. It's given us some great ideas about food and other aspects of running a food led business. Wine and spirits are often being exhibited at tasting sessions as a key part of the selling process. There are interestingly also some of the PubCo's exhibiting and even this year a whole competition for Gastro Pub chefs. As for beer....what beer?

Shepherd Neame have been there, and were this year, but only showing off their brewed under licence beers. As I think one friend of mine has commented "Watch out for BUL", an unfortunate acronym I feel. No sign of Spitfire or Bishops finger and why not? Well I think I know why, and I'll try to explain.

Having tasted some fantastic barley wines with some classic cheese styles the day before what I found further confirmed the main barrier to beer with food. The barley wines matched the cheeses so well, much better than any standard beer might and showing up the key problem with standard British beer and food matching. Standard session pub beer does not go with food. No, don't argue, it jolly well does not.

OK, maybe with your steak and ale pie, gravy and peas, maybe with your curry and rice or possibly with battered cod and chips, which is why we think about these foods in pubs. But when it comes to better quality food these thin, watery and relatively bland beers just fight against the food and destroy the joy of both. At best a regular session bitter acts as a palate cleanser and might, if you are lucky, contrast with good effect, but the best food I have ever enjoyed has always been with wine.

But I'm a beer writer, I can't say these things. Surely fine dining food must be able to match with beer? Yes, I very much believe it can. We need to think in the same way as the sommelier in a great restaurant. We need to think about what is bold enough to stand up to great food, what can match and compliment to provide an integrated experience. Without this approach we are still going to find a great gulf between the beer and restaurant trade.

At the barley wine seminar the beers we tasted with the cheese blended and complimented bringing out the best in both. I'm not sure I would go quite as far as saying that the sum was greater than the parts but at least it was moving in that direction. The reason in my view is the fact that these barley wine beers were generally stronger and matured, and the similarities to a good Vin du Bourgogne, for instance, are not lost on me.

Funnily enough, as I type this I get a comment on twitter from Jeff Pickthall. He ate a very nice meal last night but he had "3 ales all fresh but all very similar. Had pigeon starter and rabbit main + Hawkshead and Ennerdale bitters but craved Belgies". Thanks Jeff, spookily on queue. For me, with this type of food the Belgian beers just win hands down, although I would also settle for a barley wine.

There are several very good beer wholesalers in this country. I have never seen any at the Restaurant Show. Come on beer industry, lets start joining in with the restaurant trade rather than moaning about them taking trade from pubs. Lest start producing more beers that better match food and get them out there into the restaurant trade.

If any beer wholesaler wants a passionate speaker, who also has a little experience with food and understands what might turn on a food operator to the right type of beer, I'd be interested in helping at the next restaurant show.

Food

"I like food" one of the phrases often said by a quiet and unassuming employee we once had here. God bless him, Joel Stacey was killed in a tragic cycling accident in 2007. I remember his love of food and the positive contribution to our place with great joy. Perhaps you had to be there but the almost childish statement he made about any reference to the intake of solid calorific substances was extremely endearing.

I like food very much too, probably equal to beer. When I say food I mean good home made stuff, not the belly fillers that make up the vast majority of the fuel people use to keep their metabolism going. It perhaps started with making solid, baked fermented wheat products, similar to beer but with a shorter production cycle and often referred to as bread. This first happened, probably before I can remember, in my Grandmother's kitchen.

If I had to choose between never having good beer again or never having good food again the choice would be very tough indeed.

So why do I want to talk about food on my beer blog? The reason is simple, it's because food has now become far more important to most on trade outlets that do sell beer than the beer itself. Until the beer, and more importantly real ale industry come right out and admit this wholeheartedly, then we are going to have problems.

"We know that" you say. "We accept that pubs have to do food" you say. But you do not embrace it. If every pub served the same beer and had the same interior and style then there would be no reason to look for other pubs.

Food is the reason most people visit pubs. Most people look for something different these days. If all there was on the menu was scampi, gammon or fish and chips most of us would get fed up.

So why is there this inverted snobbery surrounding the so called gastro pub? It may be an unfortunate phrase, there are some terrible examples for sure, but why is the concept a bad one? If it's a pub and serves good beer and allows you to drink beer then it's good.

I accept that there is an interesting situation where some places make it difficult to have drinks only, due to the volume of food the establishment serves, but this only goes to show how successful this style of place is.

If we wish pubs to survive we have to accept that some will have to find new markets. The inverted snobbery of some commentators in the beer market are damaging the ability of the pub market to move forward into this century.

Moreover, it is with great conviction that I believe the real ale industry is missing out on the ability to move into the lucrative market of fine dining. Many good chefs are now bestowing the virtues of specialist beers. If we keep knocking the restaurant trade by poo pooing all "gastro" operations we are missing a great opportunity. I think we should start campaigning to get cask ale into restaurants rather than saying that restaurants are bad for the pub and beer industry.

So, please, don't criticise a place because the food is too fancy for you. Move forward. You don't have to like more up to date cuisine if your tastes or wallet don't allow, but remember that pubs won't survive if they all have to be the same.