Scottsdale culinary fest and Belgium

The Scottsdale Culinary Fest is this weekend downtown. It is a chance to try some great food from some of the areas restaurants and to also try some great beer. Sadly, they separate the beer from most of the food with the exception of one of the giant swill macrobreweries that probably pays a pretty penny to be outside of the beer garden area because they know no one in the beer garden area would drink their beer if they were up against real beer.

It is too bad that the people organizing the Scottsdale Culinary fest don't realize that good beer and good food really go together well and should not be separated. No where is this more evident than in Belgium and Germany. In Germany it is next to impossible to find a restaurant that doesn't have draft beer available, even the McDonalds and KFC's over there have draft beer available. While the Germans love to have beer with their meals (including some at breakfast), the Belgians on the other hand love to make beer a part of the meal and have many dishes that are prepared with beer as an ingredient. Here in the United States we call it a beer dinner if a place does a special occasion and prepares the food with beer as an ingredient, over there it is more like a daily routine.

On my recent trip to Europe we ate at a number of great places in Belgium where they prepare the food with beer. One dish that I had a couple of times was called Carbonnades. Carbonnades is basically a beef stew of sorts, (sometimes made with horsemeat) and often made with a good Belgian Trappist Double. If you have ever been to an Irish place and had a Guinness stew it is comparable to it but even better because the beer is so much richer. This is probably about the simplest beer dish that they make over there. Some of the other meals we had included scampi, codfish, mussels, duck, miscellaneous side dishes and veggies and for dessert we even had sorbets made with fruit lambics that were fantastic. I hate using this comparison but the cuisine of Belgium has a strong French influence but is even better because of the incorporation of beer and also larger portions. Oh, while I'm thinking of France, they don't serve you french fries with most of your meals in Belgium but Belgian fries. It was the Belgian's who were the ones who invented fries. It was the cheeseball french who stole it and changed the name to french fries.

If you happen to go to Belgium I would advise going to the Hotel Marion in Oostende, The Hommelhof in Watou and the Spinnekopke in Brussels as don't miss semi gourmet beer restaurants. There is another place on the last trip that we were supposed to go called the Watermolen in St. Peters Lieuw that is supposed to be fantastic also bad sadly they called us as we were on our way there because the chef was out sick that day and they had to cancel a dinner that was to be made totally with Chimay beers that I was really looking forward to. Maybe I'll get there next time. Until then, you can catch me going out and buying good food at the Scottsdale Culinary fest and taking it into the beer garden area to wash it down with a good beer.

Prost, Ron