Fido Food & Beer Tasting – Part 1

We started this blog to document what we’re learning and to educate our readers about all things craft beer. In our second post, I said, “Our focus for this blog is to help the growth and adoption of craft beer by all, with an emphasis on promoting it ladies like me, who didn’t realize she liked beer for a long time.” Beer reviews are a big part of that, but we’ll also cover craft beer events, especially ones that include food!

On Thursday, August 2 Kendall & I attended the Fido Food & Beer Tasting, presented by Fido and Bounty Bev distributors. Fido is an upscale coffee shop, but there’s so much more than coffee on the menu, including some of the best food in Nashville! Chef & General Manager John Stephenson and his team prepared some wonderful pairings of food & beer.

We were seated at a table with a fun group of people who really know a lot about craft beer – Joshua from Bounty Bev, Matt Leff of Rhizome Productions and his lovely wife, Tracey. Matt is doing great work in Nashville promoting craft beer with events like the East Nashville beer fest, 12th South Winter Warmer and the Brew at the Zoo. (FYI, Matt is helping with the Craft Brew Review at the Gordon Jewish Community Center on August, 26. Get tickets here.)

I’ll just tell you right now, it was an awesome night! The food and beer were delicious. We had five courses, but in the interest of brevity we’re only going to tell you about two now. We’ll post a follow up in a few days. Full disclosure – the food reviews are mostly from my notes from that night and the beer reviews are from Kendall’s. As much as I enjoy good beer, I’m still learning how to describe what I’m tasting!

The night started with Lucky Bucket’s Pre-prohibition Style Lager paired with Braised pork belly skewers with sesame seeds and a hoisin and ginger ale sauce. The pork blended flavors of crisp smoked bacon with pulled-pork barbeque. The hoison and ginger ale sauce balanced the smoky pork with a spicy, sweet kick. The beer was perfect, nothing goes with pork like a good lager, and Lucky Bucket is a great lager. It was a rich copper, clear with a good head. It was malty, crisp and light in the mouth. We picked up a hint of floral aroma, but no hoppiness.

The second course was a Stoudts’ Pils with a corn dawg (yes, that’s how they spelled it!) of housemade chorizo and masa corn batter, with pickled pepper mayo. The chorizo had the perfect spicy kick and the cornmeal had great texture and flavor. It was everything you expected in a gourmet corn dog. The pickled pepper mayo was amazing, I had to refrain from licking the plate! The Pils was the perfect pairing. Kendall’s not a big fan of Pilsner, but this was one of his favorites in the style. It’s a classic straw color of a Pilsner. It’s dry and smooth, with just a touch of classic noble hops. There’s no doubt what style of beer this is, a very good example of the Pilsner.

That’s all for now, part 2 will be soon. But before that, expect to see a feature on Nashville’s newest brewery, East Nashville’s Fat Bottom Brewing, opening Friday, August 17.