Oriental express
Last issue we got stuck into one of the gastonomic world's greatest creations - beer and curry. Now we explore beer's other perfect partner - a Chinese takeaway! Ben McFarland picks up his chopsticks
Extortionately priced raw fish served on a conveyor belt is the new fast food; we‘re shifting our furniture about in a quest to improve our love life, career and bank balance; we’re necking Chinese herbal medicine to cure our ailments; chopsticks are the thinking man’s knife and fork; there are minimalist Japanese shops on the high street, Chinese players in the Premiership, crazy Japanese game shows on the telly and arty Manga films at the cinema. Throw in the Beijing Olympics next year and it’s safe to say that we’re all going mental for all things Oriental.
And whether it’s subtle sushi in a style bar or a creamy Thai green curry in a rural boozer, Pan-Asian cuisine has firmly entrenched itself within the western world’s gastronomic psyche and, now, Asian beers are also making the transition from the tables of ethnic restaurants into the drinking repertoires of the young and trendy.
When Asian beer and food fuse together, however, it tends to be a relatively pedestrian affair. The vast majority of Chinese and Japanese restaurants couldn’t give a crispy duck about the kinship between the two and rarely stock more than a couple of taste-a-like lagers.
Given Far Eastern cuisine’s myriad of rich flavours, variety of textures and wide gamut of ingredients, this myopic approach to beer and food matching seems a rather baffling oversight and one that, we felt, needed to be urgently addressed. It’s time for the grasshopper to leave the temple.
So, in a display of journalistic .....
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By Ben McFarland
Section : Beer and Food
Page number : 40
