Beer me.

Last night, Trevor and I went to a Vegetarian Beer Tasting at the Cambridge Common in...Cambridge.

Tasting menus are always so enticing, but hard as a vegetarian to justify $40-$75 a plate when you know you're only going to be eat maybe 1/3 of what is served, or (in my case) feel very uncomfortable asking for special treatment (Side note: Last night, the woman from Beer Advocate said to not feel this way about tasting menus,that if you call in advance and request a vegetarian option, any restaurant should be able to provide one. And if they can't, "then they're not real chefs." Nice!!)

The dinner last night went like this:

mozzarella tomato salad (Pinkus Pilsner)
arugula/grapefruit/avocado salad (Oxford Raspberry)
gazpacho (Orlio IPA)
black bean cake (Peak Organic Pale Ale)
fries with ale-spiked ketchup (Wolaver's Oatmeal Stout)
empanada with tomatillo salsa (Wolaver's IPA)
angel hair pasta with peppers and feta cheese (Orlio Common Ale)
a cheese/fruit plate (3: A double-edelweiss, a Hefeweizen and a regular wheat - I'll have to ask Trevor for their actual names)
peach cobbler (Wolaver's Brown)

It was all amazing. The cheese plate was out of this world, and the ale-spiked ketchup was even better than the homemade ketchup at Matt Murphy's... The empanada was probably the best stand alone dish. The peach cobbler / Wollaver's brown was the best pairing. And the best beer was probably the Peak Organic Pale Ale, which I'd had before, but is always just such pleasant surprise.

I took me about 24 hours to be ready to eat again. And I can't wait to do it again! I'd never eaten at the Cambridge Common before and hadn't been there since I lived in Somerville - at which point I wasn't exactly the biggest beer connoisseur, so I am particularly excited about hitting it up often with Trevor for new, local and organic offerings.