“Wine is fine, but don’t forget the beer.” That’s the message from Don Davis, co-owner and self-appointed “beer sommelier” at San Francisco’s Bin 38 restaurant and wine bar. Davis, a committed oenophile, proudly asserts that he was a beer aficionado first, so the closer he came to realizing his dream of opening a wine bar in San Francisco’s Marina District, the more determined he became to back his wine selection with a well-chosen array of beers.
“To me, it just makes sense,” Davis says. “We have beer for beer drinkers, beer for wine drinkers, beer for people who don’t think they like beer.… I see beer as being extremely complementary to wine.”
Featuring a menu that Davis describes as “California wine country cuisine,” meaning fundamentally simple dishes constructed to highlight the quality of as many local foods as possible, Bin 38 offers a suggested wine and beer pairing for every item. Some examples of Davis’ recommended beer or wine and food marriages include: chocolate pudding with Belgian framboise or late harvest Zinfandel; sautéed mussels with strong Belgian golden ale or a Sonoma Brut sparkler; and avocado and blood orange salad with Australian sparkling ale or with Argentinean Torrontes. Davis says most of his customers will opt for the wine rather than the beer but adds that many still appreciate the choice.
Davis has 22 beer selections to choose from, compared with 51 wines by the glass and another hundred by the bottle.
“Our beer list is long for a wine bar, but short for a beer place,” Davis says. “However, the advantage [to having beer] is that the guys who might otherwise stay home while their wives or girlfriends go out to the wine bar now come here with them.”
But don’t count the ladies out. With his emphasis on maintaining a stylistic diversity of beer and coupling each with a specialty glass—Davis admits that he is particularly amenable to stocking beers with signature glassware—any number of women who might think they’re coming to Bin 38 for wine end up drinking beer instead.
“People like the special glasses,” Davis says, adding that servers offer fine crystal water glasses for beers, and that the “shaker” style beer glass is never seen on his premises. “Glassware is very important to us, for wine and beer, so we do make an effort to bring in the proper glasses for each beer.”
As a result, Davis now says his four-month-old restaurant and bar sells more beer than he ever imagined.
