Beer Dinner with Bink’s and the Scottsdale Beer Company

With only one week to go until Arizona’s celebration of all things adult-beverage-y (seriously, why are AZ Beer Week AND AZ Cocktail Week the same week?  The week after should be called AZ AA Week), fun events are starting to pop up all over the Valley, and we’re planning our calendar! 

Our first event of 2016 in this vein was held about a week and a half ago at Bink’s Midtown in the Arcadia area.  We’ve eaten at Chef Binkley’s original restaurant, Binkley’s (in Cave Creek), a few times over the past couple of years, once for an anniversary dinner and once for Restaurant Week with our buddies Jake and Keeli.  You never quite know what you’re going to get at Binkley’s; the restaurant focuses on new American cuisine and has a molecular gastronomy bent, so it’s all a bit odd, but it’s all 100% delicious.  In fact, a recent Phoenix Magazine article claimed that they would put some items of Binkley’s in their “Best Dishes in the Valley” issue, but you never know if the dishes will still be there the next time you visit.

One of the courses from ouranniversary dinner a few years back.Teeny, tiny sandwiches, including a Sloppy Joe,
all the way on the right.

This was the first time we’d made it to Bink’s Midtown, which has been open a relatively short period of time (relatively short, of course, becoming even more relative as I get older and older).  While Bink’s provided the food, Scottsdale Beer Company, a newer brewery in the area (they just celebrated their one year anniversary), provided the drinks.  Although we initially planned to have a larger group, most folks had to bail, so instead we had a rare double-date night with Jake and Keeli, and we truly enjoyed the fantastic company!

Our lovely dinner partners!

On to the details!  Here’s the super official menu, complete with the super official shadow of my phone in the lower left corner:

How can the next Ansel Adams work under these conditions?

We started out with some bite-sized apps, including “Flaming Hot Cheetos” (aka pork rinds) with lime yogurt, chicken pot pie croquettes with sweet pea puree, and sweet bread tacos with citrus salsa all paired with the SBC Hefeweizen.  We thoroughly enjoyed the apps, particularly the croquettes and tacos, and the beer pairing went well with them all.  SBC’s Hefe was well balanced and refreshing; some Hefe’s fall hard on the banana side while some list heavily toward cloves (how this turns out actually depends on the temperature at which the beer is fermented – a brewer can try to influence the flavor in another way, but this is the main factor – same ingredients, just different temps resulting in a completely different taste.  Isn’t science cool?), but this one shot the gap nicely.  Additionally, due to the effervescent quality of the Hefe, it lightened up the apps, which all had a fried component.  Well done!

The chicken pot pie croquettes may not be a looker,but they tasted amazeballs.

After the apps, we moved onto the official first course, a deconstructed swordfish “bahn mi,” including toasted baguette, chicken liver spread, head cheese, pickled veggies, cucumber, jalapeño, herbs, and mayo, paired with SBC’s Market Belgian Pale Ale. 

A shot of the dish with the beer in the back.Now this looks like Binkley’s food.

Although my palate has become increasingly adventurous over the years, certain words on menus still leave me a bit apprehensive, and this particular list of ingredients featured a few of those (head cheese, anyone?).  However, as I mentioned above, I trust Chef Binkley, and my trust was well founded, as everything was outstandingly delicious.  The beer was also great; it had the standard characteristics of a traditional pale ale (crisp, light), but a slight Belgian twist in the yeast profile calmed down the hoppiness that normally comes with pales.  Putting food and drink together also proved successful; the crispness of the beer played well off the heavier food elements (pate, head cheese), but the lightness of it didn’t overwhelm the delicate parts of the dish (the swordfish, veggies, and herbs).  In fact, the herbaceous nature of the dish really allowed the floral components of the beer to shine through.

Toasting the chefs and brewers!

Next up was a lamb kofta dish, served with tabouleh, golden raisins and pomegranate seeds, red onion, mint, dill, feta, and labne, paired with SBC’s Downshift IPA.  When Chef Binkley and SBC’s Chef Justin Olsen (yeah, Olsen!) spoke before the dinner started, they mentioned that they’d be serving two IPAs and that this was the lighter, calmer version of the two.  Our third full course would be served with SBC’s The Dank Triple IPA, which they described as a “hop bomb.”  More on that later. 

In the meantime, look at this gorgeous creation:

I mean, seriously.This reminds me of the scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobewhere Edmund busts through the wardrobe and eats the Turkish Delight.Dammit, kid, don’t do it!

The food was absolutely scrumptious, and even though IPAs aren’t my favorite, this one was good.  It was lighter on the hop spectrum, as previously claimed, and when we checked it in on Untappd, it was listed as a session IPA (it all makes sense now…).  While it was a good beer by itself, I don’t know that the pairing was 100% on point.  The dish featured a heavier, meatier component in the lamb (albeit a small portion of it) but it also had a creamy bit with the labne (greek yogurt – I had to look this up), and a lighter side with the tabouleh.  Overall, a session IPA just generally isn’t complex enough to handle all of those flavors, and this proved to be the case here.  Since it’s my blog, I’ll play Master Pairer and say that I would have gone with something Belgian or with a slightly maltier backbone; actually, swapping out the Pale Ale from earlier with the session IPA might have been a good play here (since I’m not sure if SBC has a Belgian in their litany of beers yet, being on the newer side of things).  Anywhoo, good beer, good food, just not an A+ pairing; nothing to be ashamed of here.

Moving on, our final savory course was a Korean-style fried chicken dish, served with spicy glaze, sesame, garlic-scallion rice, pickles, and kimchee, and it was paired with The Dank Triple IPA briefly mentioned above.  Photo below:

Looks like fried chicken!Thankfully, this was one plate to split between two people.That’s a lotta chicken.

This is where I have to deviate just a bit from the “trust Chef because everything at Binkley’s is awesome” mantra I’ve been practicing so far.  While the chicken was tasty, Chris later voiced some worries that one of his pieces wasn’t completely cooked through all the way; the piece I had was totally fine in this regard and neither Jake nor Keeli mentioned this, at least at the dinner table with us.  The pickles were outstanding (me: “the pickled cucumbers are great!  Oh wait, those are just ‘pickles,’ aren’t they?  Pickled cucumbers are just pickles.” Derp), but the kimchee was too weird even for me.  It was served cold, which I think is standard, but it seemed a little too fermented and not quite pickled enough, so the temperature combined with the squishiness of it really didn’t make me happy.  I don’t necessarily think the dish was bad, as the chefs at Bink’s most likely know FAR more about how to make kimchee than I ever will; however, I didn’t go back for a second try, and that’s saying something (marathon training = eat ALL the foods).

This dish also brought up a point Chris and I discussed later in the car regarding the mild identity crisis that Bink’s Midtown seems to be experiencing (diagnosed after our grand total of one time eating there.  Armchair psychology at its absolute worst, folks).  Binkley’s in Cave Creek is known for fine dining and the whole molecular thing.  Café Bink (technically, the second entry in the Binkley’s plan for world domination – we haven’t made it there yet) is known for being on the casual side.  So where does that leave Bink’s Midtown?  Do they go casual when their setting is more upscale (the restaurant is in a renovated house in a quiet neighborhood and it’s gorgeous)?  Do they go full fine dining but charge lower prices?  To us, this confusion was clear in the dishes they served.  Go back and look at the pictures of the first and second real courses – looks like fancy fine dining, right?  Now look again at the fried chicken.  Looks like a pile of fried chicken, albeit one more artfully arranged than normal.  Although we didn’t voice this train of thought to Jake and Keeli, while we were eating, they happened to mention visiting Bink’s Midtown during Restaurant Week one year and not being particularly impressed.  While overall, our food was great, I think we’ll just do Binkley’s from this point on and not head back to Bink’s Midtown.

SO.  Beer.  You have a big ole pile of saucy, spicy, crisp fried chicken (with pickled cucumbers!), so what do you serve it with?  A giant beer that can stand up to all of this fatty goodness.  A double or triple IPA is absolutely called for, and SBC’s The Dank did the job.  The beer itself was solid, although I wouldn’t really describe it as the “hop bomb” Chef Binkley mentioned earlier in the meal.  The nose on it was great, and it had a nice amount of malt backbone to balance the high hop content; don’t get me wrong, this was a hoppy beer.  However, when I hear “hop bomb,” I expect my palate to be absolutely attacked with bitterness, and that didn’t happen here.  Personally, this was good for me, as I don’t enjoy that, and the pairing was nicely done.

After Chris and Jake managed to choke down (really kidding here – they had no problem with this) most of the fried chicken and cleaned up properly, it was time for dessert!  Hooray!  Our last course was a peanut butter panna cotta with blackberry gelée, frozen raspberry, banana, and dark chocolate and pretzel ice creams, paired with SBC’s Texas Tea, a double chocolate imperial stout.

Dessert!Those little sprinkle looking things are the ice creams,just frozen and then chipped up into tiny pieces.Think a super fancy version of Dippin’ Dots,
and you’ll be right on track.

Peanut butter’s not my jam, so while I didn’t eat most of my panna cotta, I found the rest of the dessert to be delicious (the rest of the table destroyed theirs, so there’s that).  The gelée was well done and flavorful, and the ice cream “sprinkles” were a fun addition to the dish.  The Texas Tea also paired up well with the dessert; as an imperial stout, it had an underlying bitterness that nicely balanced out the sweetness in the food, and the chocolate malts in the brew mirrored the dark chocolate elements used by the chefs.  A win!

If anyone’s keeping score, that’s 5 solid beers, 5 great food dishes with just a few odd components/slight execution issues, and 4 spot-on pairings.  Add to that 2 delightful dining companions plus 1 excellent husband, and that’s a successful evening in my book!

Later!

Amy