For the foodies...
So much beer going down my gullet this week that I’ve had little time to write. Here is the long and short of it:
First, there was the Mared Sous giveaway at Eulogy which was good fun. Not only did was I across the bar from Joann, one of my favorite cute girl bartenders in the city, but I got free Belgian beer. It could only be beat if I were actually in Belgium or better yet Amsterdam. One of these days…one of these days. I was also graced with the presence of my role model bartender Neill who works at Eulogy as well. He’s good for lots of laughs and overall snarkasm. In the end I was fairly inebriated and in a good, happy way.
Tuesday was the Victory beer dinner at Cork,
the Westmont wine-bistro where TK works. Suzanne, Joann and I headed across the Ben Franklin in a lemon yellow mini from Philly Carshare. Suzanne’s navigational skills have mysterious precision and somehow we got there despite our collective unfamiliarity with dirty Jerz. Chef’s highlights included the split pea flan which is what pea soup would be like if it were solid. Dappled with bacon and pickled beets, the flan accentuated the hoppy crispness of the Hop Wollop, which has the nose of a good bag of dank.
The goat cheese brulee, a creamy block of heaven was cut through with the peppery citrus Victory Saison. It was almost like a cheese cake topped with crunchy sugar-which I ask, who would think ‘beer and cheesecake’ but it worked. I wouldn’t have thought to pair the duck and boursin blanc with V-12 either, because the heavy sweetness of the beer made the course heavier than necessary, but it served an interesting counterpoint to the almost unbearable lightness of the first two.
While less beer savvy folk eschewed the Hop Wollop, I found that my taste for hops has matured over the year, which is just as well with my burgeoning beer critic aspirations. Joann who is a decidedly meat and potatoes chica ordered the ribeye in addition to the four course meal. At Pittsburgh rare, it practically mooed on her plate. It was sizeable enough to be a meat orgy.
Thanks to my dairy allergy, I was unable to partake of the bread pudding which got absolutely rave reviews. Instead I got a refreshing trifecta of alcohol imbued sorbet to go with my Golden Monkey. Yum.
On Wednesday after a day of retail purgatory, Bob and I hit the Khyber for the birthday bash of a fellow goat. We saw Sneak Across the Border, a Hendrix-soaked, Floyd-esque, noisy, musical montage behind late Chili-Peppers vocals. All in all, not too bad.
I tried Yard’s Chateau Kenzo, which is the beer of the month for In Pursuit of Ale. “Chateau” and “Kenzo” are two words that have probably never before been in each other’s presence. The beer offered more hops than I expected from a Belgian double, but the spices balanced it. For me it was definitely a one drink kind of beer, not just because of its 9% ABV, but because one was just enough. We then hit Brownie’s for cocktails and the Clash on the juke. After hours Bob, TK and I played Hold ‘Em until we took all of Bob’s betting disks (for the first time ever…)
On Thursday I gave my poor, tired liver a rest…