Hops Hopper

Restaurant Week- Summer 2008 August 31, 2008

Gosh, I really suck at this.  I said I would keep up with this and in two months, I barely managed to write three entries. I think it’s mostly because I can’t remember my password to login. But I wrote it down and I think i’ll start writing a little more.

Any way, since my last post, I’ve had a few beers to drink and write about.  Where to start…

In late July, it was Restaurant Week in NYC.  Basically, a large number of restaurants (mostly expensive ones that most people couldn’t afford on a regular basis) offer a special menu in which you choose an appetizer, an entree and then a dessert for just $35.  I went to a seafood restaurant and ordered a Fisherman’s Brew Amber Lager from Massachussets.  I figured the beer and the food would work well together.  Well, unfortunately for me, I was really thirsty and finished it before my food arrived.  So i can’t really say how the pairing worked.  But it tasted real good with the bread.  Any way, according to the website (because i can’t remember anything from last month), the ABV is 5.5% and has a dry hoppy flavor.  I didn’t really think that it was that bitter.  Maybe it was the bread that affected the taste?  But even before the bread came out, i tasted the beer and i thought it was smooth (just like the website says).  Hoppy though?  Not really.  It wasn’t like a Brooklyn Lager.  But did I enjoy the beer?  Yeah it was pretty good.  Like i said, i was thirsty.

I ordered another beer and that was a really interesting beer.  This time I ordered it when my food arrived.  And I thought it was a great pairing.  Here’s what i got- soft-shelled crabs with a spicy touch with this sweet rice.  The beer that I drank was an Abita Amber Lager from Louisianna.  When it touched my tongue for the first time, i was surprised that it didn’t taste anything like all the other beers that I’ve drunk.  It tasted like caramel.  I don’t normally like caramel, but I really liked this beer.  And even more so because it just went so well with the spicyness of the crab.  It was like a party in my mouth with all my taste buds working all at the same time.  I had the sweet, the spicy, the salty (i put a little bit of that sea salt on the crab just to see what would happen) and bitterness all in one place.  It did make the rice even sweeter, which i didn’t really like, but i finished all of it any way.

So what did i learn from this?  Drink water if thirsty, then order beer to fully appreciate all the flavors.  Next post will be about a pub crawl i did in Brooklyn.  Here’s a little taste… I drank a Duff beer.  Yes, the beer that’s most commonly drunk on the show The Simpsons, although maybe not the exact type that Homer would drink.  An way, as Apu would say “Thank you, come again.”