Bottoms Up

A few years ago a beer dinner at Spenger’s Fresh Fish Grotto in Berkeley would have meant a pairing of Budweiser, Coors and Miller with a variety of fried fish.

But the founding family of this Berkeley landmark _ that once was the largest grossing restaurant in California _ sold Spenger’s to the Portland-based McCormick & Schmicks in 1998. The restaurant re-opened in 1999 and since then a succession of chefs have tried to wean longtime customers away from Spenger’s trademark fried seafood.

The restaurant has sponsored a wine dinner and now executive chef Devon Boisen is hosting a series of beer dinners. The next one features Anchor Brewing’s beers. When the menu is announced, I’ll post it here.

Last week’s dinner featured the beers of New Belgium. It was a small crowd, about 30 diners. The dinner ended with La Folie, which I wrote about in the previous post, a beer that is not for me. My tastes, fly in the face of the world of beer critics and experts, oh well.

The menu began with a gesture to Spenger’s fried food heritage: Garbanzo Fritters (fried) with lemon garlic aoili paired to Springboard Ale. This is a beer made with a number of spices, read the post below this for info. The spice and lemony character of the beer nicely blended with the crisp fritters.

The salad was my fave by far. It included a slice of watermelon, with pieces of feta cheese in a basil and grapefruit vinaigrette with a pomegranate juice reduction dribbled around the plate. My photo is here.

It was paired with Mothership Wit, a traditional American-style white beer, a blend of wheat and barley, spiced with coriander are Curacao bitter orange peel. A fascinating pairing. The sweetness of the watermelon and pomegranate made the beer, which usually has some malty sweetness, seem dry and tart. Nice pairing, great salad.

Main course was Veal Spedini paired with Fat Tire Amber Ale. It’s far from my favorite beer, but it is indeed successful.

Fat Tire is wildly popular, accounts for more than 70 percent of New Belgium’s sales and making New Belgium the third largest craft beer brewer in America with sales last year of 476,000 barrels, behind number 1 Sam Adams, 1.8 million barrels and number 2 Sierra Nevada, 662,569 barrels.

Desert was Tiramisu, the creamy, Italian delicacy, a concoction that includes Mascarpone cheese, eggs, sugar, espresso, ladyfingers and cocoa. It was paired with 1554 Black Ale, an excellent, Belgian-style-ale version of a traditional German black lager. Lots of dark malt, dry finish.

The evening ended with La Folie, about which I’ve no doubt said too much.