Roll Out the Barrel and the Grille

Beer is the most popular alcoholic drink in Canada now. Statistics show that out of nearly 2.7 litres of alcoholic beverages sold in the past two years, beer sales made up 81 per cent of the total. Wine came in a poor second with 12 % and spirits accounted for only 7 % even with the introduction of coolers in the market.

Despite this growing trend, Canada still does not have a beer culture, although this may be changing. There are more imported beers in the market now and small breweries are crafting quite distinctive beers for local consumption. Beer is, however, still generally consumed at home in front of the TV and outside in pubs and sports bars. In the summer, there are beer patios and at festivals, there are beer tents. But many of these drinking places still do not have the right menu to complement beer drinking, so foodies like me have nowhere to eat and drink beer.

Last summer, my friend and I went to the Distillery District for a stroll and decided to stop in the patio of a restaurant to try the different products of an onsite brewery. We ordered the organic lager, the hemp beer and the coffee porter all at once. It was five in the afternoon and we were a bit hungry and wanted something to eat with our beer yet we were not quite ready to have supper. We were given the menu and there was nothing we could order from it except lunch and dinner items. I went for the mussels (listed as appetizer) but I found that heavy for the time of day. Salad was light, but Caesar salad with beer? No way. We spent two hours sitting there and could have spent more money if we had something to nibble on.

The upscale restaurant could have struck a goldmine with a separate patio menu, drawing inspiration from the city’s multi-culturally diverse population, with tapas or mezes and even dimsum providing variety and excitement. I noted that the restaurant had a grille outside but it was used to broil hamburgers and sausages mainly. Think of how that could have been used to broil inexpensive squid, skewered pork and chicken, sardines, like they do in Manila and in the beachfronts.

Comparatively, pubs do more justice to beer than restaurants do. They have bar chow that go well with the beverage. But even in pubs, the variety of bar food is very limited: chicken wings, nachos, deep-fried appetizers that come frozen in a box. Peanuts (except at Armadillos and East Side Mario’s) are no longer free and are not even on the menu. Instead calorie-laden nachos with cheese are the offering. At 150 calories average, beer does not need more calorie-rich food to accompany it. I support the claim of beer advocates that the beer belly is a myth --- it’s what one eats with beer that causes the bulging stomach.

Establishments that serve beer and other alcoholic drinks are encouraged to promote eating with drinking. Food helps to absorb some of the alcohol. Starchy foods slow the alcohol absorption. The consumption of beer also has to be paced and the so-called bar chows, like nuts for example, do this job well. I can see why mussels and wings are good bar chows ---- they are fussy and take longer to eat.

But please, make eating with beer pleasurable too.

Beers can be perfectly matched to dishes in exactly the same way as wine. There is one basic principle, and this applies to wine as well, that is “the combined flavours of the food and drink together should be better than either sampled on its own, and each should enhance the appreciation of the other.” The technique is to complement or contrast. When complementing, the intensity of the flavours should at least be equal. There is always a problem with really hot and spicy food since that is at the far end of the scale. A well-respected British beer writer, Michael Jackson (not him, I said British!) argues that in this case, geographical matches work. That means, for example, that a dry, hoppy, flavourful lager like Singha is a fine match for spicy Thai food.

With so many styles of beer in the market these days, food matching should be an easy task.

Industry analysts predict that food can be an important growth area for most pubs where beer still represents about 60% of the business. It’s time to bring the two together. Ihaw-ihaw sa Toronto?