Beef: Food Pairings?

No no white people.  I mean "beef" like "conflict".  It isn't really beef, maybe just a spirited debate.  If you haven't, go check out A Good Beer Blog.  It's . . . um . . . a really good beer blog.  Seriously.  Creator and editor Alan McLeod is a fantastic writer and he has been wonderfully kind to me regarding my young efforts when I have contacted him.  But a couple days ago, he posted this article he wrote about food and beer pairing.  If you don't feel like going there (doitanyway), basically his point is that enjoying beer with food should be exactly that: enjoying, instead of memorializing and deifying some sort of taste experience.  Now, as a food nerd, I shudder a little at this.  One reason I love working in the restaurant industry, and one of the main reasons I love writing here, is that I find it exhilarating and joyous to describe (or attempt to describe) complex flavors and aromas.  However, the bit of writing he cites as an example of a certain disconnect between current beer writing and beer consuming is postiviely cringe-worthy.  Here it is, live from The Age via A Good Beer Blog:

"...beer is also great as a cleanser in the middle of a meal." A meeting with the makers of his cleanser of choice — Red Hill's Golden Ale, which he served topped with a kaffir lime foam — at an earlier Taste event, led to a joint venture in which he created a degustation menu matched with their beers. Taking the flavours of the beers as his starting point, he came up with dishes a world away from the humble meat pie... Among the fare was the aforementioned smoked trout appetiser along with pairings of Red Hill's heavier Hop Harvest and Scotch ales with slow-cooked Sher wagyu, smoked ox tongue, skordalia and grains, a wheat beer with Locheilan brie, banana bread and plum jam, and a powerful Imperial Stout with a treacle tart served with an impossibly rich sticky toffee pudding ice-cream.

Wow.  Honestly, I know El Bulli wins Greatest Restaurant in the Galaxy every year, but is there anything less appetizing than fucking delicious food turned into FOAM?  "Yeah the texture of this salmon is beautiful, but I just prefer FOOOOOAAAAMM."  That has never been said, nor will it be said.   So, yes this bit of writing is pretentious and awful, and I agree with Mr. McLeod's assertion in the comments section that "nerds need to be called out when they call themselves VIPs." (Ed. note: *dead*)  But as the fantastic Stephen Beaumont points out when debating a seperate article, "I just don't want to be served slop when I'm out having a beer".  I'm all over this.  There is nothing more despairing than drinking a fantastic beer from a jubilant selection and being served useless, nothing food (*cough*Gingerman*cough*).

It might be presumptuous, but I'm going to chime in to this conversation with these two fantastic writers.  On one hand, I completely agree with Mr. McLeod.  There is nothing that can touch a good beer in a comfortable chair with some friends.  It is times like those where even the beer can be simple, let alone the food.  Nothing derails a day of football like me telling everyone what notes to look for in their beer (trust me).  But on the other hand, why not?  Why not dive into the complexities and interactions of a good beer's relationship to a good meal?  There is a time and a place (and I think that the article cited above proves there is a style . . . yikes), but there is most certainly room for that level of interaction.

Beer gets into the nooks and crannies of food that wine can only dream of.  As a matter of fact, I've stumbled on to more good beer and food pairings by accident than I have had even suggested to me for wine.  Inevitably, someone from some paper or other is going to stroll in and, seeing the next big thing, try to rub his/her burgeoning expertise in everyone's face.  It turns into a "who is more knowledgable" contest faster than a Pitchfork readers' convention.  But we can't let a couple bad apples ruin our fun.  If this guy's writing helps me get a decent meal at my local brewpub, then ultimately I have to be for it.  How many potato skins must a man eat?

But Mr. McLeod, being a good writer, doesn't stop there.  He goes on to make a provocative point.  He feels that this sort of writing and some of craft beer's haughty behavior in general is "marketing into a niche".  I touched upon this a little with my second day post on the IGBE, but it is one of the prevailing questions that faces craft beer now.  How should it be presented?  Ultimately, there will be no one particular way.  But what will be the overall feel?  Mr. McLeod is almost certainly more knowledgeable than me on this, but I have begun to investigate (via some interviews and conversations) what the feeling is on how craft beer is presented now versus how it should be presented in the long run.  Do we view it an upscale alternative to washed-out corporate nastiness and risk alienating people, or should it be marketed as an everyone drink while possibly sacrificing the opportunity to bring beer into finer restaurants and higher regard?

This blog doesn't yet have a particularly active comments section, but I would very interested in hearing what readers have to say.  What is your perception of craft beer?  Do blogs like this help your perception?  What about the article in question?  I am going to cover this a great deal more, so please, LEAVE RESPONSES.  Let's get some violence going in the comments . . .