Beer On The Dining Table

The genie is out of the bottle. Beer is no longer seen as a quick refresher, a few pints down the pub. It has been restored to the dining table, recognised as a fine companion for food. Throughout the country, chefs and restaurateurs are marrying beer and food, choosing the best ales and lagers from around the world to complement their dishes. The richness, complexity and diversity of beer make it as good a companion at the dining table as wine.

Brew Wharf (020 7378 6601) in London was featured in an earlier article on beer-pages, and makes the case for beer with vigour and passion. The restaurant and bar opened in September as part of the revamped Borough Market area alongside Southwark Cathedral and close to London Bridge Station and the Globe Theatre. The vaulted rooms and bare brick walls include an elegant dining area with views of the small, five-barrel brewery where Iain Peebles fashions tart and fruity bitters booming with superb English hop character.

Iain is experimenting with recipes and the beers are liable to change but he entranced me with his bronze 3.6% and 4.1% beers, one tangy and peppery with the use of English Goldings hops, the other spicy and fruity thanks to the Fuggle hop variety. Both beers marry well with meat dishes on the menu, or spinach and goats cheese quiche, with croque monsieur among the sandwiches.

Brew Wharf also offers draught beers from the Meantime Brewery in Greenwich where German-trained brewmaster Alastair Hook creates such renowned styles as Pilsner, Kolsch from Cologne, German-style wheat beer and Belgian-inspired fruit beer. Confronted by a menu that ranges from soups to salads, sauerkraut, chicken, beef and cassoulet, to prawns, mussels and oysters, and cod and haddock, diners can match aromatic Pilsner with fish, spicy wheat beer with paler meats and salads, Kolsch with quiches and sauerkraut, and raspberry fruit beer with desserts.

The joys are limitless. Meantime's bottled Porter is the perfect companion for mussels or oysters, while either Meantime India Pale Ale or Chicago's Goose Island IPA - both available in bottle - are brilliant matches for beef or blue cheese. Chocolate dessert? Alastair Hook has the beery answer with his Meantime Chocolate and there is even a Meantime Coffee beer to accompany the espresso. The manager at Mash, 19-21 Great Portland Street, London W1 (020 7637 5555) once told me despairingly that most of his customers assume the name of the restaurant reflects the way he serves potato. Confronted by the brightly-painted brewing vessels at the back of the ground floor restaurant, the clientele should be aware that the mash is the first stage of the brewing process, when the starches in malted grain are magically transformed into fermentable sugar.

The brewery and its beers were developed by the much-travelled Alastair Hook. His legacy is reflected in the current range: Pilsner (4.8%), Bavarian Wheat Beer (5%) and a seasonal Autumn Ale (4.5%). Dont miss the tangy, spicy Vienna Beer (4.8%), a revival of a 19th-century Austrian lager beer that was part of the historic brewing triangle formed by the dark lagers of Munich, golden Pilsners from Bohemia and the Viennese style.

One of the worlds classic pale ales is available on draught at Joe Allens, the celebrated American restaurant at 13 Exeter Street, London WC2 (020 7836 0651).

De Koninck is brewed in Antwerp, where it is an iconic drink, served in just about every bar and restaurant in the city in its famous bolleke (little goblet) glass.

Joe Allen also offers in the beer in bollekes. It is 5%, has a dense rocky head of foam, a copper colour, and an entrancing aroma of biscuity malt, Saaz hop resins, and a spicy cinnamon note, followed by juicy malt, citrus fruit, hops and spices in the mouth and finish. The restaurant is not designed solely for carnivores: I lunched there recently on black bean soup and vegetable stew, which fused superbly with a beer whose name means the king. Two contrasting beers help bring out the finest flavours from fish and seafood dishes at The Edge in Port Isaac, Cornwall. The two-storey restaurant has magnificent views of the cliffs and sea beyond, which produces most of the fish used in the kitchen.

Two draught beers are cask-conditioned Sharps Doom Bar (4%) from a Cornish brewery based in Rock, and the Czech classic lager Budweiser Budvar (5%), one of the few remaining genuine cold-fermented beers to be properly aged or lagered, in Budvars case for 90 days.

Budvar is the perfect foil for lighter dishes, such as bream or plaice, while the uncompromisingly hoppy and bitter palate of Doom Bar cuts through the assertive flavours of garlicky mussels or hake. Sharps beers are also available in Rick Steins high-profile Seafood Restaurant in nearby Padstow. Budvar in bottle is widely available in pubs, restaurants and supermarkets but the availability of the draught version is spreading. One outlet for the draught lager is the Hand & Flowers, West Street, Marlow, Bucks (01628 482277), a welcoming old pub with a boules pitch in summer. Watch out for the recently launched Budvar Dark, a black lager and one of the finest beers I have ever drunk.

In the famous North Yorkshire brewing town of Masham, Paul Theakston has built a thriving business with his Black Sheep Brewery since he split from the local and now rival family concern.

The Black Sheep Brewery Visitors Centre in Wellgarth (01765 680100) includes a spacious bistro run by Sue Theakston where food can be matched with the full range of Black Sheep beers: Best Bitter (3.8%), Special (4.4%), Emmerdale Ale (5%), brewed with the addition of Demerara sugar, and Riggwelter (5.9%). Tours of the brewery are available: blacksheep.co.uk. To avoid igniting a family feud, there is also splendid tucker available in Theakstons White Bear, 12 Crosshills, Masham (01765 689319), washed down with Theakstons Best (3.8%), Black Bull Bitter (3.9%)), the legendary Old Peculier (5.7%) and the award-winning, citrus flavoured Scottish ale, Caledonian Deuchars IPA (3.8%).