Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Hot times in the old town....

Went to a beer drinking contest at Garrison Brewery the other night. Okay, it was a bunch of people sharing about a thousand different beers, most of which were extremely hoppy IPA's shipped in from all over who knows where.

The guru of the grains/headmaster of the hops, Greg Nash oversees these little get-togethers every now and then, masked as quality control sessions. The purpose of this one was, ostensibly, to test out the new beer he is about to release, a dunkelweizenbock, a dark strong wheat beer. (those Germans have a different name for everything!)

The beer was great, bordering on Aventinus for you geeks, but not quite the malt levels of that "standard" from Munich.

This gathering allowed my my first (finally) opportunity to try the food form The Hungry Chili, a little hole in the wall Szechuan place on Blowers Street. This street is so short, I won't bother looking up the address - find the street, you'll find the place.

We ordered in a mess of stuff from there. All of it was great - perhaps because all of it had some heat, but the flavours were real. I had crispy fish with their sauce, cashew chicken, spicy pork, and ginger beef. I want to know where they buy their ginger, because it was simply beautiful. I ate the ginger itself, not just the beef.

The only quibble was the rice - by the time we got it, it was mushy and overcooked.

I NEED to go and eat there in person now.

No comments: