Vegetarian Beer Dinner Part 3
Four
Vegetarian Sushi : cantaloupe roe, porcini sashimi, tempeh "tamago"
wasabi fondue, vanilla soy, crispy pickled ginger
Fat Gary Nut Brown Ale
Something amazing happened during this course. Continuing my role as a trouper, I took a delicate sip of the Fat Gary Nut Brown Ale. I wanted to at least try every beer. I was paying for it, after all. My lips followed their instincts and immediately puckered. My taste buds, however, were like, "Yo, hold the phone. This shit's kind of not so bad." I took another tentative swig and deduced that this was no fluke -- Fat Gary and his nuts were definitely agreeing with me. I excitedly announced to my dining partners that I was in love with this beer. "I'll meet you at the altar," I thought as I took another sip.
Unfortunately, after sip 4.5(b), he proved himself to be just as bitter and deceitful and displeasing as all those other assholes, so we done broke up.
The course, though, was delightful. Janna didn't know what wasabi was so I laughed at her small-town farm girl ignorance and considered chucking some standard food fare at her, something she would recognize. What could I throw at her that she'd recognize...? Oh, I know: an apple.
The cantaloupe roe was the most amazing thing and of course I couldn't hear how Chef Sousa made it, thanks to all the white noise radiating from the bar. Kara tried unsuccessfully to explain it to me. Something about cantaloupe and compression and then dwarves waved wands over it and they magically shrunk to look like the spitting image of roe.
Somewhere near the end of the course, I wound up with Janna's tempeh. The more the merrier has always been my belly's motto.
All pickled ginger should be served up crispy. When I buy out Food Network, this will be so.
Five
Meatless Kielbasa : purple potato-goat cheese dumpling, seaweed sauerkraut, caraway sprouts, mustard fluid gel, crème fraiche panna cotta
Gratitude Barley Wine
Oh hello, new favorite course! If this was a person, I'd have killed it and stuffed it and put it on pedestal in my bedroom, where I could shower it with love (hey, sex innuendo!) every day.
Even Kara said, "If you can get Hoover to learn how to make this for the next game night, I'll suck his balls inside out." (Stop blushing, Hoover. No one would ever like you that much.) I was a little tweaked that Janna and Kara had three full globs of creme fraiche panna cotta on their plate, while my third one was MELTED. Rip off.
This was the worst beer. Even Janna said hell no to it, and it inspired a hearty "Whoa, buddy!" from Kara, who promptly fondled her freshly-sprouted chest hair. Before the waiters came to relieve me of my growing beer collection, I mistakenly took a giant quaff of the barley beer, thinking I had grabbed my water. Janna said I made the funniest face she's ever seen, so we'll take her word for it because:
a) People are typically unable to see their own faces without the aid of a reflective surface
and
b) Janna has to see her own funny face every day, so it must have been pretty hysterical.
Then I just sat there, not knowing what to do with it. I was absolutely dreading having to swallow that vile fluid, it might as well have been Satan's own post-asparagus banquet urine and seminal fluid cocktail, with a nice sprig of Athlete foot as a garnish. I swallowed; I'm a whore.