Let me start with this: Sierra Nevada and Dogfish Head are some of my favorite breweries.   They are two of the most successful, widely available success stories of the craft beer movement.  One is a bit conservative, one a wild child, coming together to brew a collaboration beer – Life & Limb.  The beer(s) that resulted from their collaboration are stellar, and worth seeking out.  All of this makes it especially disappointing that I found the beer dinner to be a pretty big let down.  All of the food and beer were good – but the meal and flavor combinations never came together to be a cohesive whole, and the creativity and passion of the brewers failed to translate into a tasting menu that their breweries and this collaboration deserve.

But let me start from the beginning:

The dinner was held in the Marina neighborhood of San Francisco, all the way at the northern tip of the city.  Camera in hand, I readily fit into the tourist-laden area.  But with views like these, I also understand why they are all there.  Cue the gratuitous Golden Gate bridge pictures.

We were hosted by Ana Mandara, a stylish French Vietnamese restaurant.  After checking in, we gathered in a private bar area, and patiently waited for a casked pour of Limb & Life – a second runnings beer, brewed from residual sugars left over from making the initial big beer.  Since it clocked in at about 5% (rather than the more traditional 2-3%), Sam affectionately called it an “Imperial Small Beer.”  This special batch was cask conditioned, with an extra helping of dry hops.  It was stellar, with a great, creamy mouth feel, nice bitterness on the nose, and nuanced brown malt backbone.

After a brief chat by Sam & Ken about why were were all they, we were sent down to find a seat in the main dining room. In a happy accident, they only had part of the restaurant reserved, which meant that Sam & Ken couldn’t get up and give big speeches. Instead, they would have to use their inside voices, and travel table to table.  The result was a much more personal dinner – sales guys, brewers, and brewery owners rotated tables with each course, answering questions and entertaining the guests.  It was great, since it allowed our table to institute a troublesome hazing ritual for every guest to our corner.  Sorry Bryant.

Our first course was Seared Rare Ahi Tuna with Hearts of Palm, Jicama Salsa, Orange Vinaigrette.  The tuna has a nice spicy rub on the edge, and an even sear.  The crust on the fish also overwhelmed any flavors in the salad or vinaigrette.  It was a safe, but enjoyable course. It was served alongside Sierra Nevada’s Kellerweis and Dogfish’s Festina Peche.

This is where some of my issues with this beer dinner started to emerge, and my disappointment started.  It centered around two main complaints:

One – the beers being poured were off the shelf beers, widely available at a well stocked corner liquor store in San Francisco.
Two – the pairings were flat.  Neither beer did anything for the menu items.  It felt tacked on, as if they had already decided to serve this dish, and were just shoe-horning in the beers to fit.

In this case, the tart, acidic bite of the Festina didn’t do anything for the fish, and clashed with the spicy crust. The same with the Kellerwies, whose overwhelming phenolics didn’t match up the fish at all.  Which is a real shame: both of these beers are good, and can easily be paired with seafood, but instead of seared spicy tuna, if you play to the citrus flavors and go with a flakey white fish with butter and lemon – then we’d really be talking.  If if you’re going to stick with the tuna, match up against the spice with some with hops in in.  Torpedo poured against Ninety Minute here would have been more interesting for the beers in relation to each other, and the tuna’s crust.

Moving on: Five-Spiced Crispy Skin Poussin, Sugar Snap Peas, White Corn Pilaf, Sweet & Sour Sauce.  Served with Dogfish Midas Touch and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Sadly, the story  here is much the same as before.  The food was well prepared, but marred by an overly sweet peanut sauce below  - at least the skin was up to snuff as it was claimed in the title of the dish.  Midas Touch is a great, interesting beer was completely out of place.  It’s overly sweet complexion has to be treated carefully, and served it was a sweet sauce was impossible to each together, with just sugar on top of sugar piling up. The pale was passable, but come on – it was Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, the grandpa of craft beers.  It what you order when you don’t have any other choice in a place with a poor beer selection.  It is most certainly not what you offer up at a $100 a seat beer dinner.

Finally, we had a pairing that worked: Wokked Tournedos of Beef Filet Mignon, Peppercress, Red Sweet Onions.  Served with Sierra Nevada’s Celebration Ale, and Dogfish Head’s Palo Santo Marron.

The Palo Santo’s dark, woody flavors were a great pairing for the soy in the beef.  The sauce really brought out the richness of the beer, and complimented it to make a outstanding pairing. The Celebration worked fine, but much in the same was the Pale Ale did earlier – as a balanced beer that will compliment most any plate of food decently.  Both beers are widely available in twelve ounce bottles around the bay.

Finally we were at dessert, and the big beer we’d all been waiting for: Life & Limb. We had a choice for dessert – I opted for the Flourless Coconut Rum Cake.  Others had the Valrhona Dark Chocolate Semifreddo.

This beer is really something. It has a deep rich malt backbone, and light fruit esters from the yeast – the result of, as Sam so eloquently put it “our yeast strains doing it!”  I thought that the rum cake was the superior dessert, with a slightly toothsome flan texture, the rum was a great fit for the malt bill. The chocolate was rich and silky, and brought out the cocoa notes that are in the beer as well.  The problem is, it all just felt so safe.  Why not try something new? But why didn’t they make a desert and replace the rum with Life & Limb? Make a malt crumble using the same malts that are in the beer? Something, anything?

This gets at the core problem I had with this dinner.  Yes, the food was well prepared, and the beers well brewed.  But it felt as if there was a distinct lack of effort put into the meal.  The food all felt like it was right of the regular menu.  Not a single dish was cooked with beer from what I saw. Of the eight beers served, six are widely available. These are two of the breweries most obsessed with perfection, with creativity, with pushing the limits – why wasn’t any of that reflected in this dinner, outside of the Life & Limb beers themselves?

I know I’m being a tough critic, but for the cost of a meal like this, I have expectations to be wowed just a bit more, and be impressed.  Both breweries brew a huge range of exciting beers that they didn’t bring to the table.

Ken and Sam – congrats on brewing a very special beer together, it’s great, you should be proud of yourselves.  I just wish the dinner matched it, and it’s all the more frustrating, because I know it could have.

Tags: dogfish head, Life & Limb, Sierra Nevada

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 11:23 am and is filed under Reviews, Stories, beer dinner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.