Tag Archives: Joeys

Trendy Casual Dinning & Craft Beer

Vancouver’s suburbs, for the most part offer very little to the world of good food and drink. Most bars and pubs tend to serve passionless food and a selection of seven lagers with one pale ale. I have found that Carling’s Black Label tends to be on special three nights of the week in most Langley pubs. I see no great problem with this, suburban communities are teaming with bar goers who love this sort of thing. The only problem I see is the lack of diversity; if I want to go out for a quality drink and a well prepared, but not fussy, meal I have very little choice.

On the opposite spectrum of the country bar is the urban trendy casual dining restaurant. Establishments such as Earls, Moxies, Cactus Club, Joey’s, recently Mr. Mikes Steakhouse, and many many more, fall into this fast growing category.

The servers at these restaurants tend to look like this:

servers

The food tends to look like this:

cactus club

The clientele tend to look like this:

moxies

And the beer is almost always a house brand psuedo-craft-brewed lager and pale ale combination.  This is a problem.

These restaurants are targeted towards dinners who are somewhat image conscious, but also want good food.  When a plate at one of these restaurants is prepared by a caring line cook, the meal is often quite good, but when an upset college student is in the kitchen, the results can be less than acceptable.

Serving house brand beer is simply unacceptable when no other craft beer is offered.  For starters, house brand beer tends to be almost identical if not identical to the contract brewers standard offering.  For example, Mr. Mikes Steakhouse and Bar offers a house brand beer brewed by Okanagan Springs Brewing that taste the same as Okanagan Springs Pale Ale.  By creating a house brand beer, the real brewer receives no credit – the contract might be financially rewarding to the brewer, but the brewer is losing out on a big opportunity to build brand awareness and create new customers.  Everyday, thousands of customers fill these restaurants, many of them ordering a pint of house brand beer, and most of these people will have absolutely no idea who brewed the beer they enjoyed with their meal.  What a missed opportunity to promote quality craft beer.

The second problem is, once again, the lack of selection.  Most of these trendy casual dining restaurants offer bottled lager and house brand pale ale and lager.   How creative!  Instead of only serving house brand craft beer, why not offer a larger selection of branded craft beer.  Serving only house wine would be unacceptable in most establishments, serving only house beer should be equally unacceptable.

I live in the suburbs, and will continue to visit local pubs for cheap wings on Wednesday night, and will eat at trendy casual dinning restaurants on occasion.  But I will never truly be satisfied until I see a proper beer selection that includes a mix of both micro and macro brewed beer at all suburban establishments.

Cheers,

Erik

Red Thai Curry and Hefeweizen

Red  Thai Curry served alongside Bavarian Hefeweizen is my new favourite food and beer pairing.

I was out for lunch last Friday at Joeys with some friends from work.   Joeys is a relatively small restaurant chain where new world cuisine and a charged atmosphere melds with hip comfort. This means a globally diverse yet distinctly North American menu is creatively served in an attractive manner by even more attractive woman – and quite honesty, it works.

One of my colleagues, who happens to be a passionate Irishmen with a solid respect for good beer, recommended a pitcher of Hefeweizen – I gladly accepted.   Joeys serves a selection of house brand beer  that is brewed by none other than Whistler Brewing, better known as KB Brewing.  Once the beer was ordered my choice of food became quite simple, I had no option other than to order the Panang Prawn Curry Bowl.  Proper Hefeweizen has a subtle too strong banana flavour with a hint of cloves.  Although A Red Thai Curry uses neither banana or cloves as  ingredients, the spicy tropical flavour found in most Thai curries seemed to be a natural match with Hefeweizen.

My food was delivered by an attractive woman and was creatively platted with a large banana leaf garnish on the side.  The banana leaf suggested that I had hit a home run with my food and  beer selection.  The fork reached my mouth and in went the Thai curry -  it was delicious, pleasantly sweet with a tropical coconut flavour countered with a spicy finish.  Down went the fork and up went the glass of beer – had I been working at my job for over a month I would have jumped up and down victoriously, the pairing was a success.  I subdued my reaction to a small grin, although in my head I was doing a victory dance, and carried on savoring my lunch.

Those who say Singha and Thai food are a match made in heaven are wrong – sorry, but it is the truth.  If you ever happen to find yourself in a Thai restaurant that serves a well brewed Hefeweizen I highly recommend taking full advantage of this spectacular flavour combination.

Erik