The culinary industry remains vibrant because food is a basic necessity. This sector is also highly competitive, so restaurants typically go all out to distinguish themselves from their rivals. Offering exquisite food and drink pairings is one of the most widely used tactics restaurants rely on to achieve this.
Food and beverage pairings are an intelligent way to engage patrons and offer them a more exciting dining experience. These pairings are also opportunities for guests to try something new, and you can promote more expensive drinks to enjoy higher profits. Below are some simple tips worth following to create great food and drink pairings for your restaurant.
Match the weight of your dishes.
Matching a dish’s weight to its accompanying beverage’s weight is a fundamental component of food and drink pairing that you should know. Weight is significant when pairing wines because one side of the pairing must not dominate the other. Heavy foods have typically robust flavor profiles, with textures and aromas that are equally not subtle. For wines, the fuller the body, the more weight it has. A wine’s alcohol content and tannin levels typically determine its body, so keep this in mind. Generally, your food and wine weights should be similar unless you intend for one of the pairings to take center stage. As a restaurant business, utilizing the right equipment, like commercial refrigerators, is necessary to enable your business to function effectively. Leading restaurant suppliers such as The Restaurant Warehouse have an array of quality equipment available.
The Restaurant Warehouse is a Seattle-based company that offers a wide range of durable equipment to commercial kitchens in the foodservice industry. They’re known suppliers of quality commercial cooking equipment like refrigerators, freezers, fryers, ice machines, commercial sinks, hot plates, and grills. The Restaurant Warehouse’s reach-in refrigerator range is produced by some of the world’s premier commercial refrigeration product manufacturers like True Refrigeration and Atosa Refrigerators. These reach-in refrigerators use environmentally friendly refrigerants which don’t deplete the ozone layer. Additionally, you will find several Energy Star-rated options from their commercial refrigerators for sale. What’s more, the Restaurant Warehouse allows you to finance the equipment you need urgently for an affordable low monthly payment. This way, you will secure restaurant supplies from this vendor at lower prices than other competitors.
Pay attention to seasonings and spices.
Many fine dining experts suggest paying significant attention to food seasoning as a guide to beverage pairing. According to them, you can quickly know which spirits, wines, and beers pair well with particular dishes by paying attention to the meat or other protein being served. After mastering basic pairings, you can now focus on each dish’s spices before pairing them with the best drinks. For example, hot and spicy dishes go best with sweeter drinks, while barbeque or smoky dishes pair well with deep oak-flavored drinks. Also, an American IPA is typically bitter and hoppy, so it must be paired with foods with equally strong tastes to ensure it doesn’t overwhelm the dish. The American India pale ale has an intense citrus aroma with fruity characters, a smooth medium-bodied mouthfeel, and noticeable hop bitterness. The American IPA also has a strong malt backbone with floral and citrus hop flavors and is best served in IPA glassware.
Try regional wine pairings.
Thanks to the adage “what grows together, goes together,” regional wine pairing is a growing trend in restaurants that you should strongly consider. The basic idea is to build a regionally focused wine list highlighting the varying styles from a single wine region or country. You can create custom wine pairings by matching a local dish with a particular wine from the same area. Wine and cuisine from the same region have naturally been enjoyed together for many years, so regional-specific dishes and corresponding wines are great combinations whose pairings are deeply steeped in history. These pairings are also easy to pitch to tables because they’re straightforward and make a lot of sense to customers. Consequently, invest in a good supply of alcoholic beverages from a reputed alcoholic beverage distributor in the United States. These wholesale distributors can deliver a wide range of alcoholic drinks, including quality farm winery and craft beers from some of the country’s best breweries.
Combine flavor profiles effectively.
Flavor profiles are another excellent guide to pairing food and beverage that you should consider. In wine pairing, there are varying schools of thought regarding whether one should pair wine and food with complimentary tastes or contrasting flavors. Both have their unique perks because preference and taste are subjective. One school of thought says that like-minded pairings are the best way to pair wine and food because similar tastes enhance each other when they interact. On the other hand, others think that contrasting tastes work best because a rounder flavor profile is ideal. These contrasting tastes also fill in each other’s gaps to create a delightful experience for your palate.
However, experienced restaurateurs suggest exploring both contrasting and complementary pairing strategies as you deem fit. There’s no stringent, correct way to do it, so feel free to experiment with both approaches to find the best pairings your guests are likely to enjoy most. Also, since seafood like shrimp is a restaurant staple that guests enjoy, consider investing in fresh, wild-caught Gulf shrimp and shrimp products from a reputed retailer. Drinks like gin martinis and Weissbier best complement shrimp’s briny sweetness, so keep this in mind when seeking the best beverage pairings to serve with your shrimp dishes.
Build a versatile wine inventory.
High-acidity wines and wines with some sweetness are the best and most versatile for food pairings. Consequently, stock up on these versatile wines to ensure that customers can enjoy many of your menu offerings with several of your wines for sale. Low-acidity wines and those that aren’t that sweet don’t pair well with several popular foods, so you’re better off investing in versatile ones to avoid losses.
Restaurant food and drink pairings are a great way to introduce clients to new tastes and sell your expensive drinks for more profits. The above-listed points are guiding principles for creating great food and wine pairings that will delight your restaurant’s customers.
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