Whole Foods Market Pearl Brewery Dinners

Do you check the Events page of your local Whole Foods once in a while? You may be surprised at all the events the store has.

For instance, the local Whole Foods to my home happens to be the one in the Pearl District at 1210 N Couch, though I will also visit the one in the Hollywood neighborhood as well since it is close to my gym. During this month of August 2014, the Whole Foods Market Pearl location alone will be hosting a kids Melonheads class to taste melons and learn to make melon soup, teach you how to use lentils in a variety of ways, have a free Sandwich Smackdown event  to inspire you to make new creative sandwiches and you get to vote for the winner, and offers a class to make 3 meals in a jar! Most of these events have only a small cost, ranging from free to donation to $15.

One of the monthly events they will be doing are Whole Foods Market Pearl Brewery Dinners. For August, this will be a four course dinner on Thursday August 21, 6:30-9:30 pm made by the Whole Foods chef paired with Hopworks Urban Brewery beers. The cost is $15, and all proceeds benefit The Whole Kids Foundation, an organization devoted to improving children’s nutrition and wellness with the goal of ending the childhood obesity epidemic.

To give you an idea of what this would be like I wanted to recap the dinner they did for July with Fort George Brewery. This event was a little pricier at $25, but when you see that third course, you will understand how that course alone justifies the price. I do want to disclose that I was invited to this dinner but I will be back and pay my way to experience more of these brewery dinners, and this recap is no different than any of my other recaps.

We started off with an Artisan Cheese plate paired with Fort George Wit. While of course I loved all that cheese…mmm cheeeeese… Because the Wit is a light Belgian style  I also loved the pairing of the Fort George Wit beer (conveniently in a can in case you want to take it camping or on a river float or on a hike) with the pate on a Simple & Crisp dried Orange fruit crisp. Simple & Crisp, like Fort George, are both local purveyors – both north of us, with Fort George in Astoria and Simple & Crisp a little bit more so in Seattle.

In an interesting twist, although a Wit beer is traditionally brewed with coriander and orange zest, the Fort George Wit instead uses more local flavors, specifically coriander and lemongrass (to impart a citrus character but in a different way) as well as a bit of floral note thanks to elderflower. This is tasty, and for me then adding in the bite of orange fruit crisp (the orange that is usually there but not there in this wit) with the creaminess of cheese and pate made this dish disappear in minutes.

Next, we first got to admire the really cool Fort George 3 Way IPA can. This beer is a collaboration of 3 breweries (thus 3 Way) of Fort George (guitarist on the very right) with the other rocking breweries here of Block 15 (middle) and Boneyard (left).

This IPA was then paired with this delicious course from Whole Foods Pearl chef Matt of Scallops with pea puree and beet greens. This may sound like an odd pairing, but actually this IPA has lots of citrus and especially lemon tones to it that of course go well with buttery seared scallops. Then add the natural hop flavors of the beer with the earthy pea puree and greens and it was a winning combination in which the IPA tastes better with the food, one of the transformations I always love discovering when attending beer and food pairing events.

And then it was the time for the main course, which as mentioned before totally justifies the $25 ticket price. You can expect to get a great value for your cost here. I mean look at the size of this dinner plate! This is the Alaskan halibut dish with roasted cherry tomatoes, mache, crimini and shitake mushrooms, potatoes, roasted pepper pesto and greens with Sherry Bacon Vinaigrette and oh, a little bit more bacon. The Fort George beer pairing here was a special beer they made for the Cheers to Belgian Beers festival, Tripel Au Poivre, so this was our lucky chance to be able drink this one off special beer they created. This halibut dish was such an embodiment of the richness of summer, so full of flavors and textures. I kept eating it even though I was full-  I left no survivor behind on that plate.

As if that was not already amazing enough, before I could stagger out of here, stuffed, out came dessert: Polish’s Walnut Stout Float with Mexican Chocolate. The Fort George Polish’s Walnut Stout was another unique beer that they especially created earlier this year for February Stout Month and their special dark beer festival, the Festival of the Dark Arts, that they hold every year. The Polish in the name comes from the brewer, nicknamed Polish. The beer uses walnuts in the fermenter for nutty taste and then more walnuts, this time toasted, for aroma.

You then pour this nutty toasty roasty beer into a mason jar with honey coconut whip and Mexican chocolate cherry cream (again made with coconut base) – so that this whole dessert is vegan and maybe even healthy… YUM. And they literally added a cherry on top.

I’m not even sure what to say what was the highlight of this four course meal… all the pairings were wonderful, as I detailed when describing each course. If I had to pick my least favorite, it would have to be the Tripel Au Poivre with the halibut only because the halibut, with all that gorgeous color and medley of flavors, just paled in taste. But, that’s only because the halibut was just so outstanding. I did like the beer by itself, but the flavors are very light so were in my opinion overwhelmed by the boldness of the food dish.

My favorite pairing was the IPA (as you may know, I’m not a huge fan of unbalanced bitterness, and so many IPAs are such hop monsters on the West Coast) with the scallops because it made me really love that IPA when I normally probably wouldn’t. My second favorite was the cheese plate with the Wit, just because I loved the addition of that orange chip with cheese or pate in my mouthful before the sip of beer and the play of the orange flavor being separate from the Wit. Overall, I thought it was totally a great deal, and I want to encourage more beer dinner pairing events.

This Fort George dinner is actually the second of the series- if you want a recap of their first brewery dinner with The Commons, check out this recap by Kris from Beer Musings at her post Beer Dinner at a Grocery Store for more reassurance that you are getting a good bang for your buck.

And for even more food pornesque photos of the dinner, Marlynn of Urban Bliss Life took her as always mouthwatering want to eat your screen photos as she was sitting right across from me (and you can see my out of focus flowery shirt in the background of her shots 😛 ) at her post Beer Pairings Menus at Whole Foods Market

I also encourage you if you are in Astoria to stop at Fort George Brewery. They always have a huge selection of beers to taste, and so visit (maybe they’ll be brewing and you can smell the delicious beer in progress in the air), relax while having lunch or dinner or just snacks. I always enjoy restaurants that use their chalkboards to not just write the menu but also use it for art, and Fort George does an admirable job of that as well at their main restaurant portion, but they have also a taproom section by where the tank are, an outdoor area, and an upstairs bar. If you get normal pours instead of the taster tray one of the options is mason jar sized!

Disclosure: This meal was complimentary, but I will always provide my honest opinion and assessment of all products and experiences I may be given. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are entirely my own.