Pubs, Christmas Food and Women

The Christmas party season is in full swing now – I hope you’ve been feeling festive! Whether you’ve been out and about at your work’s party, throwing your own parties or just spending more time with your friends in the run up to Christmas, hopefully you’ve been able to spend more time than usual in a pub this December. Perhaps you’ve been eating out more too – if so, you might have noticed that there’s not much about beer and food matching on the menu. This is something I feel passionately about, and I’ve written about it here before – but what about enjoying beer in the food?

If you’ve read my posts on this blog before, you’ll know that I work for BitterSweet Partnership, helping to encourage women to appreciate the beauty of beer. This Christmas, we’ve worked with top chef Allegra McEvedy (who you may have seen on BBC’s “Economy Gastronomy”) to create a festive Christmas menu that I think would entice anyone – particularly females – into trying and enjoying beer. She recommends cooking with beer as it “gives a much lighter finish than the usual heavier alcohols associated with Christmas cooking” – a refreshing change for the season most associated with heavy indulgence.

Click here to see her alternative Christmas dinner with a twist – I can’t wait to give it a try, and I hope that lots of other food and drink lovers out there feel the same. Perhaps her innovative take on using beer in the food could be adopted for a pub menu – if it encourages more women to try beer, then surely it’s in the pub’s interest to give it a go? As my fellow Good Pub Guide blogger Paul Humphreys writes, pubs that try something different to entice us in are more likely to stay alive. By different, I mean fresh combinations that delight or intrigue – so old favourites including beer battered fish or steak and ale pie don’t count!

What do you think – could food encourage new fans of beer? Would you like to see dishes like Allegra’s available at your local pub?