Great Food Demands Great Beer

Fact: Most fine-dining restaurants fail at beer. They’ll put all of their focus on creating extensive wine and spirit lists—hiring a sommelier, pairing wine with the experience and upselling aperitifs and digestifs. Beer is treated as inferior, an afterthought; a server can rattle through the average beer list in five seconds—and give you a nasty look for ordering one even quicker.

Situations like these almost make us embarrassed to order beer, but it’s the establishments and their chefs who should bear the shame for taking pride in their food, wine, spirits, décor, atmosphere and service while letting their beer offerings slack. We don’t understand how the vast majority of chefs can slap their food in the face by allowing patrons pair their creations with mediocrity or cliché. Why go through such incredible attention to detail to make everything top-notch, only to betray yourself with the same cookie-cutter selection of six beers that everyone else carries?! You can probably sense that we’re disappointed by this.

Sure, some restaurants are evolving and recognizing that better beer can provide both an exciting and profitable opportunity, and they should be praised; but “some” are not enough, and beer bars and brewpubs shouldn’t be the only places where you can sit down for great food and great beer.

Beer is far more versatile than wine—and (as you’ll read in our feature), that goes for cooking as well as pairing. And like wine, many beers can be cellared and sold as vintage. Pair this with proper presentation and glassware, and restaurateurs could have a great deal of fun integrating the fastest-growing alcoholic beverage in America into their menus.

What we need is a call to action!

BeerAdvocates: Next time you’re fine-dining and the selection sucks, ask for the manager and question why! Offer to send them suggestions, demand that they explore better options, and stress that until they do, you might not return and will not recommend their restaurant to anyone else. If they’re not interested, get up, walk out, and take your money elsewhere. You’ll feel good about yourself.

Restaurateurs and chefs: We challenge you to care. Hell, we’ll even give you some tips: ■

• Don’t be chained to a single distributor. Introduce local beers and artisan imports into your offerings.
• Rotate your offerings with the seasons and/or (ideally) your menu.
• Create a vintage cellar beer list that includes stronger and bottle-conditioned beers known to age well.
• Create a beer menu, or at least include beer in your other menus.
• Invest in proper beer glassware, or use oversized wine glasses instead of boring shaker pints.
• Train your staff on the beer basics—sales reps will often be more than happy to help. At the very least, educate them on the brands you carry and how they should be served.
• Host a beer dinner, an event to launch a new beer on the menu, or a tasting that pairs cheese or chocolate with beer.
• Subscribe to this magazine, and we’ll help keep you in the know.