Dining out in Portland, Oregon and other Food Travels
This quarterly dinner series by Imperial Session duo Advanced Cicerone Ryan Spencer (Bailey’s Taproom) with dishes from Chef Spencer Watari (Clyde Common) pairs beers and food. Unlike many beer and food dinners, this pop up concept does not beholden itself to any particular breweries or restaurant so they can select any beer or dish to make an interesting pairing without worrying about representing or promoting any business. The last dinner focus was on beers from New England.
Last year, I highlighted a new beer dinner pop up series called Imperial Session. Now here’s a look at my Imperial Session Beer Dinner Recap from that September 18 event. They offered both an omnivore and vegetarian version (vegetarian must have given prior notice so they can prepare accordingly) and each of the five courses was paired with a full pour of a beer.
What is unique about this beer pairing pop up are that Ryan and Spencer can choose whatever food style or beer they want for each course, since they are not representing any particular restaurant or brewery. For this dinner for instance, 2 of the 5 beers were unavailable in Oregon, 2 beers were vintages which are no longer available, and 1 was a small batch brewery only release.
Beer is the perfect accompaniment to dinner or lunch. But it also goes great with breakfast! Especially when the beers themselves taste like some of our favorite breakfast treats.
The Beer for Breakfast special event on September 25th brought together beer and food pairing in a meal many not think to pair with beer. With two seatings available at 9AM and then 11AM at Great Notion Brewing, the event offered for $50 a grand 3 courses with literally a dozen beers – 4 beers with each course!
Great Notion is not usually open for brunch, though I hope they might consider doing so after tasting how great these dishes were and how well they paired with beer. I also greatly appreciated that there was an omnivore option as well as a vegan option, which allows the meatless eaters out there to also be able to enjoy the deliciousness.
Parfait (either dairy or vegan yogurt) with marionberry and ginger compote and pulverized hazelnut brittle and Random Order blueberry muffin or a vegan blueberry fig bar.
By itself, I liked the hint of spicy of the Tepache with Prosecco with its effervescence. But, it seemed a bit much with the yogurt unless you made sure you got a spoonful of the ginger with your bite. The Blueberry Pancakes, the stout of these four, went best with the blueberry muffin, no surprise there not only for its hint of blueberry but because it’s stronger sweet maple syrup could then be balanced by the crumb of muffin.
Meanwhile I liked how the Imperial Wit with Pineapple highlighted the berry and the yogurt with its fruit and bit of funkiness in the flavors of the beer. I’ve always like the Tepache, but since it’s not a beer even though I adore it it won’t make my list of best beers of the brunch, though it is a fantastic mixer for many a beer.
Of all four beers, my favorite of them all in this pairing since it went with everything was the Barred Aged Apricot Mimosa that was tart and refreshing with a fruitiness that went well both with marionberry and with blueberry. This beer also makes the top 2 faves of the whole meal.
Oatmeal Brulee with grilled peaches, caramelized brown sugar, Double Stack Stout reduction and either housemade sausage or vegan sausage
My #1 favorite beer of the entire Beer for Breakfast event is definitely the Double Mountain Lyle Rider Bloody Mary Red Ale which perfectly mimicked a bloody mary. I found the Bellini to carry peach flavors well, but also had a slightly harsh finish as if it was a Bellini made with a cheap prosecco? Ha ha I still finished it though. The Oatmeal Pale had a great texture, but I was hoping for more vanilla and raisin then I got than just porridge.
The best pairing of the four was the Double Stack Imperial Breakfast stout with its sweet maple and roasty coffee – since the oatmeal has reduced Double Stack reduction the fact these two were complimentary – with the reduction being sweeter and thinner so you could detect more body and coffee (including natural coffee bitterness) in the beer – was intriguing for me.
House Empanada stuffed with pepper bacon, sharp cheddar, home fries with scrambled cage free eggs, or alternatively for vegans the empanada was stuffed with marinated tempeh, Daiya cheddar, and home fries with scrambled Ota tofu
The Orange Creamsicle here boasts strong orange flavor, but a hint of bitterness like from the rind ratehr then vanilla creaminess like I was expecting – still an enjoyable beer, but I was mislead by the name of the beer.
The Barrel Aged Coffee Stout had the most coffee of all the coffee beers this day, but it does have the extra advantage of using barrel aged coffee beans and that extra depth from bourbon. Of all the coffee beers though I still preferred of all of them the Coffee and Cigarettes Coffee Porter because I liked the strong smokiness and I thought the mouthfeel was so smooth with a nice body.
I was surprised to see the Blueberry Muffin here as really does taste like a muffin, but with extra tartness from the Berliner Weiss – perhaps juxtaposing it with the actual blueberry muffin in Course 1 was too on the nose. I really like the beer – but was a little confused on how it went with eggs or an empanada. I might have swapped the Tepache with Prosecco of course 1 with this one.
Overall, a fantastic event. One thing I wish had been clear is that although the ticket purchase via Mercury Tickets had described the price as all inclusive, we were asked at the end to drop some cash tip to show appreciation for the staff – fine to ask for, but wish we had known before hand so we could have been better prepared.
The other wish is that it would have been nice to hear a little extra about the beer or the food on why they were chosen or why the particular food preparation based on the beer. On one hand it is nice to taste everything on your own to see what you experience without being told what to look for, but on the other hand it can be educational since some might have finer palates to hear on what they might pick up on.
Ok, maybe one more wish. I wish this event, or the ability to at least have Great Notion Brunch, would be available again, not just this one event – maybe even if it’s just the last Sunday of a month, or quarterly, I would so love to experience this again and not have to wait a year. Particularly many of the GNB beers as you saw from this list are so perfect for a brunch pairing!
A new pop up is starting up in Portland this time focused on food with another PDX famous love, beer! Advanced Cicerone Ryan Spencer (you may have seen him at Bailey’s Taproom) and Chef Spencer Watari (Clyde Common, Pok Pok) are collaborating together under the name Imperial Session to launch a quarterly dinner series focused on beer and food pairing. The first Imperial Session Beer Dinner will be a five course dinner with pairings for each course on Sunday September 18th at Shift Drinks’ Makeshift Room (former home of Nomad PDX). The dinner seating starts at 7 PM with reservations via tickets available now on EventBrite, with a suggested cash donation of $55 paid at the end of the meal.
Ryan and Spencer are working together to break down the biases and commitments of a typical beer dinner, with the goal of offering guests the ability to experience a wide range of beer and food interactions without boundaries. For instance, usually beer dinner events feature a single restaurant working with a single brewery.
“The problems we found with these dinners were that they all felt more promotional than genuine. Brewer’s wanted to showcase their flagship beers and restaurants wanted to promote their establishments. Both parties seemed to be looking out for their own best interests with little collaboration taking place. We wanted to create a dining experience where we could pour whatever we wanted and serve food that created the ultimate pairing.” Ryan and Spencer explained.
Meanwhile, Imperial Session has intentionally selected beers that are a little outside of the norm. For instance, for this initial dinner, 2 of the 5 beers are unavailable in Oregon, 2 are vintages which are no longer available, and 1 is a small batch brewery only release.
The dinners are intentionally small in order to have guests easily interact with Ryan and Spencer as well as with other guests and allow for smaller batch sourcing of quality ingredients, including rare beers.
Down the road Imperial Session hopes to feature different local chefs to create unique tasting menus for the dinner series, where Spencer operates as the permanent chef and assists the guest chef in formatting their menu into their constraints while also working with Ryan to create pairings.
They have also discussed the opposite situation where they bring in someone from the beer industry to curate a selection of beers to pair with one of Spencer’s menus. Imperial Session could be a venue and opportunity to work out some creative ideas with people whose formal positions in the food and drink industry don’t currently allow that chance.
Ryan and Spencer have known each other for the majority of their lives, both having grown up in the Portland Metro area and first meeting in third grade and then attending University of Oregon where they home brewed together. Growing up in The Pacific Northwest, surrounded by a wide range of food and beverage, they said it seemed pretty natural to both of them to pursue careers in those two fields.
Ryan got his start as a dishwasher position at Hopworks before expanding to jobs at Deschutes, Gigantic, and his current position at Bailey’s Taproom where he also has been getting cicerone certifications (the equivalent of a wine sommelier, it requires various levels of examinations). Meanwhile, after college, Spencer moved around for a bit until he settled at Pok Pok for two years before he transitioned to Clyde Common to continue to develop his skills with a more diverse range of cuisines.
For years they have both talked about going into some type of venture together. The specific idea for joining forces to do beer and food pairing dinners came from attending several “Brewer’s Dinners” throughout Portland when Ryan was studying to take the Master Cicerone exam and trying to gain experience with beer and food pairing. Imperial Session is finally those talks, their history, experience, and their expertise coming together for them.
Here’s a look at the menu for this first Imperial Session beer and food pairing dinner. For this particular menu, a few of the dishes were dishes Spencer was really excited about, they tasted through them, and Ryan tried to find beers that might work. On the other hand, a few of the pairings started with a beer that Ryan felt would be really interesting and food friendly, then they designed a dish around the beer. They hope to impart some of the knowledge they acquired from the beer and food pairing process to guests as part of the dinner.
This is the omnivore menu, a vegetarian version is available by advanced notice at their discretion.
Course One:
Grilled corn, kewpie mayo, togarashi cracklin, and avocado puree
Paired with Trillium Pier (a hopped American Pale Wheat Ale from Massachusetts)
Course Two:
Radish and turnip salad, caramel egg dressing, carbonated citruses
Paired with Breakside Carte Blanche (American Wild Ale with Brett, gin and hops)
Course Three:
Lamb pierogies, mint chimichurri sour cream, peas, spring allium
Paired with De Garde/Heater Allen Doppelbock (Eichenbock, an oak barrel-aged Doppelbock)
Course Four:
Sai oua sausage, fingerling potatoes, charred green onions, mushroom demi-glace
Paired with Holy Mountain The Goat (Saison / Farmhouse style ale from Washington)
Dessert:
TBA
Paired with Block 15 2015 Kriek (Kriek is a cherry sour /wild ale style)
This past Sunday, I attended the closing event of Portland Beer Week, and here is my Snackdown 2016 Recap! Taking place 12 – 4 PM at The Evergreen event space above Loyal Legion, Snackdown was a food and beer pairing event where 10 of Portland Chefs and 10 Oregon Brewers are paired into 10 Brewer/Chef teams to make snack and beer pairing. The atmosphere is styled like a WWF style Smackdown with brewers and chefs hyping their pairing on the mic – possibly while sporting wrestling themed costume – while in the background a large screen played old matches from the days of Hulk – I guess in the mid 80s.
DJ Rev Shines was playing fun music to keep everyone grooving while snacking. Everyone seemed to be having fun and in a great playful mood.
Herb of Loyal Legion served as MC and got all the brewer/chef teams to take turns doing a little smack talking throughout the event
Guests got to vote on their favorite pairing and the winning team will be awarded the Snackdown Belt – which is apparently a wristlet version for the brewery and restaurant, here being modeled by Co-organizer of the event, Ben Love of Gigantic Brewing.
The 10 Brewer/Chef teams for 2016 were:
I really hope they bring this Snackdown event back for next year – it was a great value I think since for the price with 10 small dishes from high quality restaurants (some which are harder to get into like Nomad). Also, receiving 10 five ounce pours of beers is a lot – after a while I realized I had to start cutting back on my sipping. Congratulations to Toro Bravo and Hopworks on their win this year!
It was a little haphazard trying to find a place to put a plate and glass down in order to be able to eat – just a few more cocktail tables, even along the side wall by the DJ, could have helped as I saw some people take a gamble by placing glasses on the floor to eat. But, there never seemed to be a line of more than a handful of people to get a pour – a combination of the number of people who came this year I think at a manageble size and each of the stations was well prepared with food plates ready. A checklist sheet listing all the beer and food pairings made it easy to know ahead of time who you wanted to visit in what order and track that you enjoyed all ten teams.
It’s also unfortunate there was no award for best dressed brewer – Gigantic’s Ben Love went all out, Ecliptic’s John Harris and those fly arm bands and velvet cape, and the cozy PJs with hand drawn hop crest of Ryan Pappe of Portland Brewing were all outstanding and committed to a whole wrestler hero vibe experience. And Herb was perfect as an announcer – everyone was so much fun. The friendly tongue I’m cheek smack talking and friendship between the Brewers and various food crafters I think perfectly embodies the Portland spirit in the food and drink community.
What would have been your vote for best beer and food pairing based on this Snackdown 2016 Recap?
Pechluck's Food Adventures
Enjoying deliciousness in Portland & wherever travels may lead me.
My name is Pech, short for Pechluck. I enjoy adventures in eating - dining out and cooking and imbibing for local Portland deliciousness or wherever travels lead.
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