Beer off a duck's back
Can beer really hack it at the poshest of dinner tables? Ben McFarland books into tthe three Michelin star eaterie Fat Duck and finds out
If this whole idea of bringing food and beer together is ever going to truly get off the ground then the great and the good of gastronomy must first give it the thumbs up.
There’s been plenty of chatter about the joyous wonders of matching beer with haute cuisine but much of it has come from the partisan lips of brewers and, let’s be honest, most of that’s been more theory than practice.
Take a straw-poll of the United Kingdom’s more elite eateries and you’ll discover that the fine dining jury has remained out with regard to beer’s potential love affair with great grub. For the vast majority of top-notch restaurants, beer still lags behind cutlery and linen napkins on the list of priorities.
In fact, even butter can lay claim to a more prominent billing. Restaurants offer diners the choice of either salted or unsalted with one’s fancy bread but when it comes to offering beer styles, you can drink absolutely anything as long as it’s lager… sloshed and served in a pint glass... accompanied by either snobby distain or disbelief.
This is a particularly depressing snub made all the more baffling in light of fact that innovation, experimentation and gastronomic mould-breaking has never been so rife in British cuisine.
The Fat Duck, a three-star Michelin restaurant and former beery boozer in the small Berkshire village of Bray, is a case in point. Owner and proprietor Heston Blumenthal has been hailed as the most exciting thing to happen to the British culinary scene since slic.....
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By Ben McFarland
Section : Beer and Food
Page number : 40
