Recently I have eaten in a number of restaurants. They have ranged from the cheap and cheerful right through to the finer end of dinning. There has been one thing that has been common across them all, a blasé attitude to their beer stocks. In every one of the last 5 restaurants I have dined at I have been told that a certain beer has run out when I have ordered it. Is it so hard to stock a beer fridge? Does this happen with that wine? I suspect not.
Rotherfield, at last
6 hours ago
4 comments:
To play devil's advocate for a second, it's a lot easier to maintain wine than beer. Especially NZ craft beer with its attendant stability and longevity issues. If we had established beer sommeliers, this could be less of a problem, but until then, I applaud restaurants who even make an effort.
The only place that I've been constantly happy with (and that is happy, certainly not ecstatic) is Boulcott Street Bistro. They always have a couple of good NZ beers, Little Creatures, and a few good Europeans (usually Belgian).
My friend Leigh Thornett and her partner (multiple award winning chef) Hemi Tahu just opened Charlie Bill in Thorndon, very nice food. They only had Tuatara Porter and Pilsner when I was last in but I'm working on them upgrading to a couple more interesting beers.
I take your point Greig but I suspect many of the staff at these restaurants would be unaware that beer could go off, I suspect its more that beer just doesn't figure on their radar.
what you might be looking at here is a couple of places who want to serve decent beer, order a little to see how it goes, then pay no mind when wine stocks outsell. That happens a lot. with a little more advertising, or effort, they could probably pull beer sales up and make it worthwhile.
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