Duck tacos with pineapple-habanero salsa. A rabbit burger served with beer-soaked Gouda cheese. Macaroni and cheese topped with Spanish chorizo sausage.
These are the type of menu items you might expect to experience in some swank Bobby Flay-inspired urban restaurant.
But at a brewery? A pub?
The craft-beer craze that continues to gain momentum in North County is bringing slow food along for the ride. And local foodies are being treated to an increasing array of beer-driven food featuring fresh, local ingredients, and often the very hand-crafted suds that accompany it.
“It’s a perfect storm,” said Grant Tondro, who last year opened Urge American Gastropub in Rancho Bernardo with fellow Rancho Bernardo High grads Zak and Nate Higson.
“People started to expect more out of their coffee when Starbucks came around. They realized there was so much more to life than Folgers instant coffee. They don’t want to go to another chain restaurant that has the same five beers on tap, the same two margaritas and the same enchiladas. People want choice. This was an opportunity to give them that choice and promote intelligent consumption.”
Wine, traditionally, has been the food partner of choice. But the growing popularity of craft beer is changing that, and establishments such as Urge, the Linkery in North Park, Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens in Escondido and the recently opened Union Kitchen & Tap in Encinitas are capitalizing.
Ballast Point Brewing Company is reportedly expanding its Scripps Ranch location, which may include a restaurant and its own on-site sausage and charcuterie-making facility.
A sommelier for the past nine years, Tondro, who also co-owns The Barrel Room Wine Bar and Bistro across the courtyard from Urge, said it’s actually easier to pair beer with food than wine because the hand-crafted nature of craft beer gives chefs more to work with.
“Beer pairs really well with food,” said Tondro. “It seems counterintuitive because we see it in ads and from the European culture how wine goes so well with food, but with beer it’s easier to find complementary flavors. The malty characteristics in most beers give you a lot more flexibility. You can almost always find something that’s going to work for people.”
Tondro said about 75 percent of Urge menu items are made with beer —- its chipotle sauce served on the Fahrenheit Burger is made with Rogue Brewery’s Chipotle Porter, and its New York steak is finished with O’Hara’s Celtic Stout demi-glace.
While Urge focuses on taking traditional pub food to the next level, Stone’s menu is anything but conventional.
Stone, which is expanding its kitchen as part of a larger $20 million expansion that includes a new catering division, doesn’t do typical burgers and fries. The bistro plates items such as chicken tikka masala, pan-roasted scallops with white truffle pommes puree, and braised lamb shank. Not exactly what you’d expect from a brewery. But considering the bistro’s revenue growth has been at least 26 percent every year since it opened in 2006, Stone is doing something right.
“We have a balance of people who get it, and people who don’t get it,” said executive chef Alex Carballo. “The critics say, ‘I can’t believe you don’t have French fries. I can’t believe you don’t have hot wings. I can’t believe you don’t have TVs.’ But that’s not what our approach is.”
“We’ve always had a reputation of being quite different, yet when we opened the restaurant I was shocked that some people wanted us to be same old same old,” added Greg Koch, Stone’s CEO and co-founder. “That didn’t make any sense to me. I like the idea of applying our same sensibility and creativity to the world of food. And just like it’s OK for not everybody to like our beer, it’s OK for not everybody to like our food.
“Some folks have an expectation that we should make food for them. I look at it from a different perspective. We need to do what we’re passionate about and what we’re inspired by, and then make it available for people to decide for themselves if they like it.”
An example of that is Stone’s homemade kimchee, served with turbinado sugar and sea salt. A traditional Korean vegetable dish, kimchee is hardly a best- seller for Stone. But it stays on the menu because of the simple fact that Stone likes having it on the menu.
“By typical restaurant analysis, kimchee would have come off (the menu) a long time ago, but it’s not just about numbers,” Koch said. “It’s about what do we want, who are we, what do we like?”
The entire Stone menu is made from local ingredients —- local meaning about a 100-mile radius —- primarily from small-scale organic growers.
Last week it announced it has taken over operations of La Milpa Organica, an 18-acre organic farm just off Deer Springs Road in Escondido that was struggling financially. Stone Farms, as it is now called, will supply the bistro with produce, eggs from the chickens it is raising and possibly tilapia.
Pumpkins were recently planted to supply a collaboration pumpkin beer the brewery is planning for August.
“I am perhaps most proud that we have become the largest restaurant purchaser of local, small-farm organic produce in San Diego County,” Koch said. “Being able to expand upon that further and actually grow some of it ourselves is very exciting.”
Tondro said just as people are expecting more out of their beer, they want more from their food as well.
“People’s tastes are changing,” he said. “I remember when I moved here 17 years ago, every restaurant that was opening in Carmel Mountain Ranch was a chain. One the one hand it’s dependable, you always know what you are going to get —- nothing more, nothing less. But people want more now. People don’t want just another burger, or just another chain Mexican restaurant. People aren’t afraid to spend their money on quality.
Beer Brewing ,Brewing equipments , Micro brewing equipment , Mini brewing equipment , Home brewing equipment ,Copper brewing equipment ,Copper brewery service
No Comments » | 
Uncategorized | 
Permalink
Posted by botebearings
