Whine and Dine

Okay so I'm a little peeved and need to get this off my chest.

I love a good beer and do enjoy going out to restaurants with my wife. Fine food, tasty beverages, what a great night out. Well no actually. Not at all unless I plan on drinking wine. Whilst there is nothing wrong with that (I love wine as much as the next person), my issue is with beer and the fact I am rarely able to enjoy good beer with a great meal in the vast majority of restaurants.

Whilst the consumption of craft beer is increasing and microbreweries and boutique beer dedicated bars are popping up around the place, the beer options on drink menus in restaurants is consistently a disgrace.

This was highlighted recently during a meal in a very good restaurant in Melbourne. We simply did not feel like wine, especially after a couple of quality beers before hand at Beer Deluxe. So, hopeful there might be a decent beer option to have with dinner I asked what beers they had available. Sadly I should have guessed:

• Carlton Draught
• Pure Blonde
• Crown Lager
• VB
• Cascade Premium Light
• Asahi
• Heineken

What a great idea. Add two recognisable foreign beers and 'everyone should be happy'. So typical of most restaurants. Why is it that when a restaurant plans a menu it takes the time to consider its wine list almost as much as the food itself; making sure various wine options and styles are considered. The restaurant in question had dozens of wine options with a pretty extensive Victorian selection. That's great. Yet putting together the beer list read like they had 30 seconds to come up with something. And its pretty much the same everywhere. I have sat in some of the best restaurants in Melbourne and been saddened at the beer options on their menu. As a beer drinker I think it detracts from its 5 star status.

How can a restaurant charge hundreds of dollars for a meal and offer up Carlton Draught (for example) as a beer option? It would be like merging Vue De Monde with McDonald's. Makes no sense to me.

Any beer enthusiast would know how well good beer can and should be matched to food. Some restaurants (such as Josie Bones in Collingwood) make the effort to ensure guests can drink excellent beer with great food, but that is such a rarity. The recent Brooklyn Brewery Degustation Dinner during Good Beer Week also showed how easily (and well) beer can be matched with food.

I understand that in a standard pub the majority of beer taps are going to be dedicated to the corporate giants. Fosters/CUB in Melbourne, Toohey's in Sydney and so on. There's various reasons why this occurs, most of them economical. But surely a restaurant has much more freedom to stock the beers they want on their menu? By all means offer Carlton Draught or Crownies if people are asking for them, but why on earth can't a selection (even a small one) of decent craft beer be on the menu? Make it regional if they like so tourists and locals get to try some of that state's finest ales. Restaurants bother doing that with wine don't they? It's good for the restaurant, it's good for the breweries, it's good for the economy...right?

But no. Restaurants continue to have a 1980s attitude that beer is a beverage best suited to pubs where cheaper is better and its primary purpose is to get people drunk. It doesn't really sit well in restaurants but the odd person (especially older, overweight males from previous generations) will probably ask for a beer with their meal because they don't drink wine, so we better stock a few generic, bland brands. But lets impress the sheila with plenty of good wine selections...

My gut feel is that the beer options in a number of good restaurants is getting worse not better. This is despite the increasing availability of good beer. Go to the website of any decent restaurant and 99% of the time you'll find the lunch/dinner menu and the wine menu. It's so irrelevant to the restaurant that the beer selection isn't even mentioned most of the time, when it could be a selling point! I've given up even checking for it on menus before going to a restaurant.

It's highly annoying that at home I know how well a Two Birds Brewing Golden Ale goes with Thai food. Or a Holgate Temptress with chocolate pudding. Or a Red Hill Imperial Stout with oysters. But that's okay, beer at a fine dining establishment seems to mean pork belly with Carlton Draught, wagyu beef with well, Carlton Draught or seared salmon with...well you get the idea. Thought I was in a restaurant not sitting at the football.

No wonder I stick to wine every time. Such a shame really...

Anyway rant over, I'm out of breath. Until next time!

Till then,

Cheers!…Prost!...Salute!...Kampai!