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The 10th annual San Francisco Beer Week begins on Friday, sweeping into to town until Feb. 14 with plenty of opportunities to forget about the rain and sample a huge variety of suds and grub at some of the city's finest establishments. As event director as well as one of the city's few certified cicerones (beer sommeliers), Rich Higgins will be on the front lines of the festivities all week long, beginning with the S.F. Brewers' Guild Opening Gala at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (701 Mission at Third St.) on Friday, Feb. 5. Thirty Northern California breweries will be pouring their unique and creative brews for the event, alongside nibbles served by 4505 Meats, Tacolicious, and Tataki Sushi.
For a more intimate taste, he recommends attending one of the many special dinners and pairing events. "I'm particularly excited about all the beer dinners coming up, because the emphasis of my career has been beer pairings," says Higgins, who created the beer pairing menus for local hotspots Starbelly (3583 16th St. at Market) and Beretta (1199 Valencia at 23rd St.).
Starbelly's five-course beer dinner is happening Sunday, Feb. 7, at 7 p.m. and costs $60 per person. Menu highlights include chicken-liver pâté with grilled bread and sour-cherry chutney; fried clams with Old Bay aioli; and roasted butternut squash with sage, black garlic, and cream. "We’re starting with a Belgian-style Trippel," Higgins says. "It's light in color, with a lot of fruit and spice flavors. It works well with the fattier starters like chicken livers and fried clams. You never want to overwhelm a diner with too much flavor too early."
Buy tickets and make reservations for Beer Week events here. |
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Beer Week continues with the aforementioned Beretta Beer Dinner on Monday, Feb. 8. Higgins and chef Ruggero Gadaldi have collaborated on a five-course menu whose highlights include warm salad of shellfish and citrus with fingerling potatoes, frisée, and caperberries (served with Le Merle, North Coast Brewing Co., Fort Bragg); pizza with roast cauliflower, pancetta, onions, panna, and parmesan (with Cucapá Chupacabras Pale Ale, Cerveceria de Baja California, Mexicali, Mexico); and potato gnocchi with wild boar ragout (with Interlude, Allagash Brewing Co., Portland, Maine).
The dinner starts at 7 p.m. and costs $58 per person. Check out the full menu.
Scala's Bistro (432 Powell at Post) is getting in on the action with a five-course beer dinner on Wednesday, Feb. 10. Chef Jen Biesty's Beer and Nosh menu includes crab toast with miso-beer dressing, celery-root remoulade, Meyer lemon. and chervil (served with Dogfish Chateau Jiahu); duck liver ravioli with 15-year-old balsamic, duck chicharrones, brown butter, and beer-braised carrots (with Sierra Nevada Old Ale); and crepes with blood orange and kumquats (with a Triple Rock IMAX Double IPA).
The dinner starts at 6:30 p.m. and costs $100 per person. |
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Culinary party planners Parties That Cook have teamed up with the do-it-yourself winemakers at Crushpad (2573 Third St. at 22nd St.) for a special evening of cooking, eating, and drinking — all for a great purpose.
On Thursday, Feb. 4, the Cooking for a Cause evening will benefit Room to Read, a nonprofit that helps bring educational opportunities to the developing world by (among other things) partnering with local communities, establishing libraries, and building schools to help educate girls and young women. The evening will lead guests through a wine tasting and preparation of a small-plates menu representing regional dishes from many of the Asian and African countries Room to Read serves.
The menu includes Indian-spiced lamb burgers with cucumber raita; peanut and coconut potstickers with sweet and spicy soy dipping sauce; grilled shrimp skewers with mint-jalapeño sauce; bacon-wrapped plums filled with blue cheese and balsamic-honey glaze; curried flatbread with mango-currant chutney; and coconut cupcakes with coconut-cream frosting. The festivities will end with Room to Read founder John Wood discussing the origins and mission of his charity.
The event runs from 5:45 to 9 p.m. and costs $95 per person (with a fundraising goal of $25,000).
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To kick off its newly designed bar menu, Waterbar (399 Embarcadero at Folsom) is introducing its Come Unhinged Happy Hour. Mondays through Fridays from 3 to 6 p.m., the bar is expanding its deservedly popular $1 oyster-of-the-day deal, which is now available from 11:30 a.m. until 6 p.m., and is adding a slew of brand-new bar plates including fried butternut squash ravioli with pomegranate brown butter ($9); grilled flank steak skewers with chimichurri sauce ($9); Van's shrimp tacos with handmade tortillas and fire-roasted salsa ($7 each); and wood-oven pizzetta with oven-roasted tomatoes, balsamic onion, and arugula ($11).
Drinks specials include $5 specialty cocktails like the Roadster (Russian Standard vodka, Damrak gin, and St. Germain elderflower liqueur) and A Spa in Cabo (Cabrito Platinum tequila and cucumber); $5 glasses of La Marca Prosecco and Nick's Cuvée Pinot Grigio; and $3 bottles of Session Premium Lager. Sounds like the perfect end to a workday. For more information or to make reservations, call 284-9922. |
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