Nancy Kruse takes a look at how chefs at concepts like T.G.I. Friday's, Applebee's and Red Robin Gourmet Burgers are using beer as a profile-boosting ingredient in menu items.
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Specialty beers have followed heirloom produce, rustic breads and artisanal cheeses into the culinary spotlight. Beer has become a favored ingredient in the kitchen, as chefs take advantage of both its flavor and its image to add luster to a wide variety of dishes.
It’s crafty. Small brewers have become very big business. Tapping into the same small-is-beautiful zeitgeist as farmers markets and boutique wines, craft-beer production has increased exponentially. GuestMetrics reported that approximately 1,000 new craft beers appeared in restaurants and taverns last year. That dramatic indicator of patron interest hasn’t been lost on menu R&D executives.
T.G.I. Friday’s Spicy Craft Beer-Cheese Burger
T.G.I. Friday’s offers a Spicy Craft Beer-Cheese Burger that boasts creamy craft-beer-cheese sauce made from a regional brew. Late last year, Applebee’s rolled out a Spirited Cuisine menu that included items like Brew Pub Pretzels served with a dip made of craft beer and white Cheddar cheese.
Using beer as an ingredient is a well-established tradition at brewpubs, such as Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery, where the Santa Fe Shrimp appetizer is topped with a beer-cream sauce, and the Chocolate Stout Cupcake has become a dessert fixture. The Gordon Biersch chain, meanwhile, uses its beer in gravy, barbecue sauce and the batter for fish and chips. Deschutes Brewery, a craft brewery based in Bend, Ore., operates its own brewpubs, and its Portland, Ore., location features Mirror Pond Pale Ale aïoli, Black Butte Porter mustard and Obsidian Stout Mac & Cheese.
It’s premium. High-end brews can add an upscale aura to foods, and Guinness, the venerable Irish stout, has been getting a lot of play recently. Slater’s 50/50, a better-burger specialist operating in Southern California, uses it in a marinade and a milk shake. Bennigan’s, one of the original fern bars — drinking-dating-dining places that proliferated in the late 20th century — has been working to update its image as a 21st-century purveyor of American fare and Irish hospitality. True to that positioning, the new menu features a Guinness Glazed Bacon Burger; the stout also appears in a chocolate dessert sauce.
Red Robin Gourmet Burgers has taken a slightly different tack with its audacious milk shakes. Last fall’s Octoberfest Milkshake was made with Samuel Adams Octoberfest draft beer, and, as autumn gave way to winter, the chain switched to a Winter Beer Shake made with Samuel Adams Winter Lager. And this spring, Luby’s promoted a Lenten special of Shiner Bock Beer Battered Fish & Chips plated with coleslaw, French fries and a hushpuppy.
It’s flavorful. Beer doesn’t have to carry a well-known brand name to deliver depth of flavor, though, as shown by the Milwaukee-based Chancery pub and restaurant’s plain-and-simple Signature Beer Cheese Soup. Similarly, beer-battered French fries and calamari appear on the appetizer list at Prohibition Burgers & Beer, based in Los Angeles. The former are tossed in garlic and Parmesan cheese, and the calamari is served with a slow-simmered marinara. The Bluebird in Chicago uses two different brews to boost the flavors of two meat dishes: pork cheeks are braised in wheat beer with chiles and smoked paprika, while duck leg is braised in kriek, a Belgian brew flavored with cherries.
Looking ahead, the beer bubble appears in no danger of bursting. Beers have become wildly popular in cocktails, like the Double Cross at JCT. Kitchen & Bar in Atlanta, where beer and gin are mixed with thyme syrup and lemon, or the Sudsy Buccaneer at The Tippler in New York, in which beer floats on a potion of tequila, pineapple purée, lime juice, green chile and spiced syrup.
Celebrity chefs are even making their own brews. Most recently, Chicago’s Rick Bayless joined such culinary luminaries as Ferran Adrià and Joël Robuchon in developing a special craft beer; he’ll be acting as master brewer to create both recipe and style of beer.
In the wake of the craft-beer boom, hard cider is also coming on strong. Tertulia in New York specializes in Spanish-style hard ciders that also appear in dishes like steamed mussels, and Fatz, a casual-dining chain headquartered in Taylors, S. C., may have been a harbinger a couple years back with TC’s Hard Cider Sirloin. Expect that beverage to present even more opportunities for operators to add a little oomph to their offerings.
Nancy Kruse, president of the Kruse Company, is a menu trends analyst based in Atlanta. As one of LinkedIn’s Top 100 Influencers in the U.S., she blogs regularly on food-related subjects on the LinkedIn website.
