Friday, March 13, 2009

Coffee Dinner

Just got word that the Dissident Chef in San Francisco will be having a coffee pairing dinner later this month, with each course paired with a cup of Ritual Roasters coffee. He was inspired by a cupping at Ritual (watch a mildly humorous (at least to me) video of the cupping here).

Tickets are about $100. You can sign up here.

I have never heard of a coffee-pairing dinner. You can get a wine-pairing dinner at any nice restaurant (I still dream of being able to splurge one day for the "Grand Tasting of Fine and Rare Wines," for the eight course chef's tasting menu at Cyrus in Healdsburg that costs $185 in additionto the food).

Less costly, but probably more fun, would be a beer-pairing course at Magnolia Pub & Brewery on Haight street. They have some interesting things brewing over there, including their Oysterhead Stout I tried at one point (Tomales Bay oysters are actually thrown into the tank when they make it, or so I was told).

But a coffee pairing dinner? That's crazy talk! I wonder how long until we see more of this happening in other foodie-centric places with a third wave coffee scene like Seattle, Portland, Chicago (Intelligentsia is a force to be reckoned with) and now New York (check out ManSeekingCoffee's recent round up of the growing specialty coffee movement in Manhattan - it's quite extensive and heartening to hear).

Plus, in these difficult economic times, coffee pairings is an interesting, different thing chefs can do to entice diners to come out for something new without breaking the bank.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the mention. Actually, there was a series of these pairings that Daniel Humphries was involved in that I was sadly never in town for in NY (see his former blogs). They sounded pretty spectacular, used a wider variety of coffees (or at least multiple roasters) and cost less. Although, they may have arguably been less elaborate and had a less pedigreed chef.

My big concern with coffee-dinner pairings is simply going to bed. A six to nine course meal paired with different coffees! As good as this sounds, wine pairings will always work better. The people who plan to stay out all night don't generally have the means to start it off with $100 a head dinners.

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This is incredible actually I'll get the ticket to attend there, thanks for the link I think the ticket is cheaper than I thought.m10m