Lure Seafood and Grille has hosted pairings dinners at their downtown restaurant for the last few months. Unique to the city of Owensboro, a pairings dinner includes five courses of food that are professionally paired alongside five different beers from a specific brewery. Lure’s most recent pairings dinner was inspired by West Sixth Brewing out of Lexington.
Bringing together beer and food enthusiasts, the Thursday night scene at Lure was heightened by a long stretch of table set up for guests before the dinner began. Each guest was given a free glass from West Sixth with their meal, and each seat was accompanied by a printed menu describing each course, as well as the beer that would be served with it.
As described by one of West Sixth’s founders, Joe Kuosman, the pairings dinner gave enthusiasts the opportunity to discuss the beers and food as each course is served. A beer sample was given to guests right before the food is delivered. Each plate was assembled with creative presentation, thanks to the hard work behind the scenes from Chef Jared McDonald and Lure operating partner Ben Skiadas.
“Ben and I are usually a good team. He’ll come up with the concepts, and then we’ll kind of sit down and tweak it a little bit,” McDonald said. “It’s two continual days of work for me to prepare for these events.”
While the table arrangement and five-course dinner emitted an aura of fancy fine-dining, Skiadas told the table beforehand to relax and have fun.
“We aren’t fancy here,” Skiadas said. “This is just beer and food.”
The first course of scallop and octopus carpaccio served with basil oil, sundried tomato oil, balsamic glaze and herbs, and it was paired with a hoppy red lager called the Super Luna Lager. Kuosman took time to explain the process behind the creation of each beer, as well as where the creative names for the beers came from.
“We’ve tried a lot of hoppy lagers,” Kuosman explained to the table. “This one is actually dry-hopped, which I think makes the hops punch a little bit more. There are some galaxy hops in this one, so we were thinking something celestial when we named it.”
The second course served was a salad made up of charred grapefruit, almonds, house made lemon cheese and the leaves from a handful of flowers, including nasturtium, begonia and geranium. The course was paired with West Sixth’s Heller Heaven IPA.
The third and fourth courses served included mushroom and parmesan ravioli and braised beef served over farro risotto. It was during the fourth course that guests began succumbing to the food and requesting take-out containers.
The courses were paired with a red sour beer called Sixfold X and a Four Roses bourbon barrel brown ale called Slap Happy. As always, these beers had a story that encompassed their existence.
“The Slap Happy is a regular brown ale that we aged in a Four Roses barrel–we use different barrels just depending where we can get it from,” Kuosman said. “Anytime we age it in bourbon barrels, it’s going to add two percent alcohol just from the residual alcohol that it sucks out of the barrel. This will sit anywhere from three to six months in the barrels.”
For dessert, the table received a slice of chocolate chess pie in honor of Pi Day, which was paired with an O.Z. Tyler Coffee Stout, giving the Kentucky-based beer pairing an even closer tie to the local market by implementing a beer aged in bourbon barrels from the local distillery.
By the end of the night, the table applauded McDonald for his work in the kitchen and even sang Happy Birthday to Kuosman, who had traveled from Lexington to enjoy the dinner pairing that featured his brewery.
Lure also hosts pairings dinner with wine and bourbon, and those wishing to attend a pairings dinner at the restaurant can call Lure to check on dates for upcoming events.
