Beer and Food Matching Taking Off

Beervana was bigger and better this year and so was the fledgling Beer and Chefs competition. This contest, also run by the Brewer’s Guild of New Zealand, challenges chefs from around Wellington to offer their very best beer and food matches using any beer they choose. There were fifteen entries this year, up from ten in the first year, and the overall winner was our friends over at Logan Brown.

Here at Tuatara, we were delighted to see our beer popping up on three of the entries. We have always been hugely supportive of beer and food matching as it is a great way of highlighting the flavours in our products and introducing the range to a more foodie audience.

Lagerfield on Blair Street offered up “Tuatara Pilsner braised duck with apple and fig jam and a cider foam, served with a Tuatara Pilsner Beer.” They described the dish on the menu as “The duck is marinated and braised in Tuatara Pilsner and the whole creation of the dish was based around matching the duck with the beer. Our chef wanted to focus on local products and locally brewed beer. The dish brings together two great New Zealand flavours and the fusion of flavours proved to be mouth watering!”

The dish is still on the Lagerfield menu and several of the Tuatara team have proclaimed it to be ‘meaty, hearty but still sophisticated.’

Over at D4 on Featherston Street, they served “lamb rump stuffed with blue cheese, walnuts and spinach with parsnip cake and fruit stuffing, paired with Tuatara Porter.” Here was their rationale:“With Tuatara Porter’s yeast flavour, we went with the blue cheese which takes some of the yeast taste out and brings other flavours through. The walnuts give it that nutty flavour to complement. Parsnip and stuffing also work really well to enhance the beer’s flavours.”

D4 is also currently selling Tuatara APA – a lot of Tuatara APA.

At Le Carnard on Murphy Street, the dish was “Tournedos of pork stuffed with prunes, wholegrain mustard sauce and Gratin Dauphinois, with Tuatara Ardennes.” Their explanation of this intriguing match read “The Tuatara Ardennes is a Belgian strong ale with smooth malt characteristics which go very well with the texture of the pork. The slight bitterness of the beer blends perfectly with the wholegrain mustard sauce. Finally, the prune adds a bit of sweetness to end in the mouth.”

If you know of places doing great food matches with Tuatara, leave a comment or drop us a line. We would love to highlight them in future posts.

Tuatara also popped up at the Chaffers Dock Building on Monday at a function to promote the 2011 Melbourne Wine and Food Festival. A gratifying number of Wellington hospitality people and various media personalities selected Tuatara Pilsner from the large range of beverages on offer. Tuatara brewer Carl Vasta was there in a suit, celebrating perhaps the fact that it was also his birthday. This basically means that everyone already owes him a beer.

Cheers from the team at Tuatara