Pairing Beer with Food

The food and beer worlds have collided—and the impact is changing the way we dine out. “People now are designing food around beer and vice versa,” says Two Stones Pub owner Michael Stiglitz. “It’s part of the market now. Beer dinners got trendy, and now they’re being perfected.” Here is a small sampling of our favorite food-and-beer mashups.

Once a month, World Cafe Live at the Queen in Wilmington lays out its Beer and Grilled Cheese spread. What exactly constitutes “grilled cheese” is open for interpretation by the cafe chefs—Cacio de Lazio on herbes de Provence bread with kalamata-olive purée, for instance—but it’s never boring, and neither is the beer. A different brewery is highlighted each month.

It’s not just the pig that’s pickled at Rehoboth’s Pickled Pig Pub: the mustard, the sauerkraut and especially the beer, cheese and crab soup—are all loaded with craft beer. 

Brewers, chefs and “infusion specialists” conspire to create a multi-course dinner on the 16th of each month at 16 Mile Taphouse in Newark. The food is inspired by a 16 Mile beer, which is soaked, steeped or blended with culinary ingredients to fuse flavors.

Between Tiny Keg Tuesday and Five-Gallon Friday, every day is a holiday at Argilla Brewing Company at Pietro’s Pizza in Pike Creek. Delaware’s smallest brewery rotates its experimental beers constantly to match its crispy pies and bar snacks, like beer-braised pork tacos.

Calling itself Delaware’s “Temple for Beer,” the flagship Two Stones Pub in Newark (and the new location in Kennett Square, Pa.) upholds its reputation as a preeminent gastropub. Intimate, 30-person, six-course beer dinners are held monthly, featuring the likes of vanilla-cured pork belly or rib-eye poached in duck fat.