Daredevil Anniversary Dinner

We have  had some wonderful opportunities to celebrate the anniversaries of several breweries this month. Among those, one of my favorites was a dinner hosted by Daredevil Brewing Co. to celebrate their first anniversary. We joined the Daredevil team at Black Market restaurant down on Mass Ave. at one of the several celebrations they had around town.

The Big Guy and I had high hopes for the menu, having been to Black Market for dinner before. We were definitely not disappointed. It was interesting to compare this dinner to another beer dinner we went to last month. I don't know how the planning for either event was done, but it seemed like the first event we attended was about fitting the beer to the food, but this one was abut selecting a menu that would best highlight the beer. I enjoyed this second approach much more. I think everything fit together better, even when the purpose of the pairing was to bring out the opposite flavors in both. Here's a bit of what I'm talking about. 

We started the dinner with an open reception and our drink of choice. I decided to try the Raspberry Muse, their regular Muse Belgian golden ale infused with raspberries. I'm a sucker for anything raspberry, and this was a great kick off to the whole thing for me. I also ordered another at the end of dinner, firmly locking this beer in place as my favorite of the night.

Our first course was an Indiana perch ceviche with pomegranates served over chicherones. For those of you not familiar with them, chicherones are basically super fancy pork rinds- but fried and light as air. This was paired with their Carnival Saison.

The second course was a red curry poutine paired with Liftoff IPA. The Big Guy loved this one. I definitely enjoyed it, but there was just a little too much heat coming off the curry for me. I'm not great with spciy things, but the hops in Liftoff played really well with the curry. Definitely a pairing I would look for again.

The main course paired a smoked porter with glazed pork cheeks served over vegetables and baked herb polenta. I tried making polenta at home once- emphasis on once. This had a creamy texture and great light flavor to balance out the richness of the pork. The smoke on the porter was light enough to give character, but still allow the beer flavors to come through. A lot of the other smoked beers I've had are almost overwhelmed by the smoke and I sometimes feel like I'm missing the actual beer. Definitely not the case here, and a great compliment to the dish.

Of course there was dessert. We were given fried waffle batter with a trio of citrus fruit preserves, salted chocolate sauce, and creme fraiche. All of this was paired with an American Barley Wine. Between the sauces you could choose for yourself if you wanted to compliment or contrast the flavors in the barley wine.

We had a great time. The food was outstanding, the beer was delicious, and we had some great company at our end of the table. We're so excited to see more Indiana breweries celebrating anniversaries and we're already looking forward to this event next year.

Congratulations and happy anniversary again to everyone over at Daredevil!