FlavBlog

We’ve been visiting Wes Johnson’s SALT since he opened it late last spring.  We live within walking distance to this converted old mansion formerly the location of Savor restaurant.  Given its close proximity to our home, focus on local ingredients, and fresh seasonal menu, we’ve had several dinners and brunch at Salt. Wes has been racking up the awards recently:  RTF’s best new restaurant and winner of the Chef battle at Taste STL. We have generally enjoyed dining at Salt, and we’ve watched Wes grow and enhance the restaurant over the last 6 months.  Robin found out via twitter (@enjoysalt) that Wes and co. were planning a beer and wild game dinner, featuring her favorite, sour beer, so we couldn’t pass it up.

On prior trips to Salt we’ve enjoyed several dishes, that are now basically permanent members of the menu.  The “seared scallop” with mustard, cedar smoke, and herbs is one of our favorite dishes, comes served in a tiny mason jar, and traps the cedar smoky goodness inside…for us, one of the better seafood dishes we’ve had in St. Louis.  Wes also prepares a fantastic lamb dish, well seasoned and cooked perfectly on the rare side with herbs and jelly. In addition, they make a now somewhat famous sorghum lacquered duck, and duck-fat fried chicken.  The trend here is that Wes likes to use more non-traditional meat varieties…he takes a more creative, risky approach to his cooking than many of the other chefs in St. Louis.  (This isn’t to say we don’t have adventurous chefs, just not as many as we should).

The beer portion of the sour beer dinner was largely organized and put together in a team fashion.  Chris Shea (Morgan Street Brewery, Assistant Brew Master) and bar manager Matt Obermark worked with Wes Johnson to pair some rare sour beers with wild game dishes influenced by seasonal autumn flavors.  The dinner took place deep in the old mansion’s wine cellar at a large communal table and was presented family style with generous platters for all of us to share.

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Most of the time I hate it when things are too unpredictable, except lately when tasting sour beers, I have found a totally different mindset. Sour beers, which include (Lambics, Gueuzes, and Flanders red ales) probably involve the most risk, and most uncertainty of any brew process. While in the barrel, sour beer undergoes some of the most exquisite changes and complexities. Since my first taste of them a couple of years ago, I have became hooked, and prefer them to any other beer type.

When living in Seattle last year we attended the “Sour Beer Fest” and we began to see a larger selection of sours in the stores. I grabbed every bottle I could prior to leaving for St. Louis and I have continued to build and grow our collection on trips to Europe (Belgium and Italy). Fortunately, The Wine and Cheese Place and Lukas Liquor here in St. Louis have provided some worldwide favorites and I have greatly increased our inventory. I recently decided that it was time to start drinking some of these sours from our cellar. This will begin a full blog series on a selection of sour beers. There will be the Beer Advocate rating system consisting of:

Appearance, Taste, Mouthfeel, and Drinkability. Food pairings will be also described when appropriate.

Tasted on 9/11/2011

Italian Panil Barriguee Oak-Aged Sour Red Ale, Batch #12, 2010, Bottle 1947

(4.5) Appearance: Rusty deep red, minimal head, some lace

(4) Smell: Campari cherry, sharp acidic grapefruit, some barnyard and pipe tobacco leaves

(4) Taste: Sharp sour notes of lemon, cherries up front, fades midway through

(4) Mouthfeel: Tart and carbonation in mouth, medium weight

(4) Drinkability: Smooth start, sour notes hit throughout the mouth, worth trying since Red Ale’s are difficult to come by, could cellar for couple more years to develop further complexity

Serve type: 750 ml bottle poured into a tulip glass

Purchase Place Price: Chicago, IL Binnys $18.99

As the football playoffs roll on and we peer outside at a cold, snow-covered St. Louis, we finally update the blog after a long absence and a difficult move from Seattle.  As many of you already know, this past October we moved from the beautiful Pacific Northwest to the Mississippi Valley.  It was tough to say goodbye to so many wonderful friends, colleagues, food, farmers, the Opera, breweries and wineries, the mountains and sea…but we now start a new chapter in our adventures and careers.

We have spent the last 2 1/2 months settling into our first home (A townhouse in St. Louis Central West End, GasLight Square), and we have only just started to explore the city of St. Louis.  This post is a compilation, a short list of some of the highlights of those past 2 1/2 months..and some of the things we’ve discovered:

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