Belgium, we know, is the homeland of exceptional beer. Not by chance is there who leaves for a trip to Flanders to visit traditional and craft breweries, participate in festivals that are all a tasting and seize every good opportunity to stick in a pub, where the first beers are picked up since the morning.
If you recognize yourself in this kind of warm tourist, you also know that to transform a simple tasting into an even more engaging sensorial experience, it takes the right food, that can perfectly mate to the beer of the moment, exalting aromas and flavors. Needless to improvise, because the food pairing, i.e.match between beer and food, It's serious. In fact, more, it's becoming a real art. So much so that you will certainly have already tasted the "bapas", the appetizers inspired by Spanish tapas that are increasingly served with special beers.
And since this is a real trend, the first restaurants of the beerstronomy, la beer-based gastronomy, where to taste gourmet dishes that have the blonde (or red, or dark, depends) drink as an ingredient. What intrigues you? So, if you're passing by Antwerp, take a jump from De Groote Witte Arend, brasserie with different traditional Flemish dishes with beer between ingredients and a rich list of special beers to match. Another address to try is Het Duvels Genot, also in Antwerp, which offers a menu of traditional dishes combined with the different products of the brewery Duvet-Moortgat.
Of course the most successful combinations are those with the typical products of the Belgian tradition, cheese and chocolate in the first place. It seems that the marriage between cheese and beer is far more natural than that with wine, the word of the most famous Flemish sommelier beer. In the meantime, because both derive their origin from cereals, the basic ingredient both of beer and of the diet of cattle and sheep. And then because beer contains sweet, bitter and bitter notes, while cheese is salty: combine them and you will have the full spectrum of flavors.
Each beer is a different cheese, and vice versa. And to find out what the ideal match is there is only one way: try, try and try. Perhaps, initially, helping you by those who are more experienced in the search for perfect harmonisation and sticking to some simple rule. The Spéciale Belge, for example, well get married with goat cheese or soft pasta, Dubbel and Tripel with seasoned meat, Strong Blonde with mature cheeses, Strong Bitter with blue cheese. A separate speech deserves the Schockaert cheese, in which the Gouden Carolus Tripel beer from the Het Anker brewery in Mechelen, is used, and is therefore perfectly matched with a glass of Tripel beer.
The same Gouden Carolus Tripel we find in bierpralines with milk chocolate and with Parisian cream produced by the brewery of Mechelen, which thus consecrates the other great, very well-known Belgian food and wine pairing, the one between beer and chocolate.
Two products that share similar taste characteristics, bitter, sour, fruity, and for this they seem made for each other, though every beer and every chocolate have different peculiarities. Even in this case, you should not get tired of trying to get to the perfect match. Maybe taking part in the guided tastings offered by two of the most famous chocolates in Brussels, Concept Chocolate and Laurent Gerbaud, which also provide an initiation to the sophisticated art ofcombination of beer and chocolate.
