Beak Diner's Club - Palmito x Beak Brewery
I am an unashamed Beak fanboy. I’ve been a big fan of them since trying a can of Parade during the first lockdown (remember that?).
Subsequently, I’ve ended up in East Sussex and can claim them as not just one of my favourite breweries but also one of my locals. I joined the Beak Social Club not long after moving - a monthly beer subscription netting you all of Beak’s new monthly releases, some core beers and the occasional bonus treat (invites to online tastings, discounts for the webshop/festival and even glassware). I’m also local enough to benefit from free delivery and always enjoy Seb the delivery driver handing me my beers on the first Friday of each month.
I’ve enjoyed the subscription a lot and it’s made me calm down my beer-ticking tendencies quite a lot. Having a steady influx of Parade and Dest has made me realise I should really drink more beers I know and love instead of trying to have a unique beer whenever the chance arises.
Beak recently announced another club, Beak Diner’s Club.
“At Beak, we think good food and good beer are two of the most important things in life. With this in mind, we’ve started Beak Diners Club: an ongoing series of supper clubs held at some of the best and most innovative restaurants in the UK. Our debut events will take place on Wednesday 20 November at the Michelin Green Star restaurant, Where the Light Gets In, in Stockport and with our good friends at Palmito in Brighton. For both events you can expect an evening of sustainable, seasonal, mouth-watering food paired with a range of fresh and limited edition Beak releases.”
It’s pretty obvious I love beer (I’m sad enough to have a blog about it after all) but I also love food and eating out at restaurants as much as I can reasonably afford to. We’ve had a lot of great meals out since moving to the coast in both Brighton and its surrounding areas. One of the places we enjoyed the most was Palmito so it was an easy decision to grab tickets for the inaugural Beak Diner’s Club event at Palmito.
Palmito offers food with influences from Latin America, Southern Europe, and South Asia. Its founder, Diego, hails from Ecuador and has lived or travelled extensively in these parts of the world. Grace Dent reviewed the restaurant and gave it high praise, so you don’t just need the words of a beer bore. Although, in an effort to sound like a hipster as much as possible, we had actually been before Dent had so we clearly have our finger on the pulse. We had been meaning to go back so BDC was the perfect excuse.
The Beak Diner’s Club menu promised 5 Ecuadorian dishes paired with 5 Beak beers for £50.
Diego welcomed us to Palmito before he headed to the kitchen to prepare the food for the evening and handed over to someone from Beak (I totally didn’t hear his name, soz mate!) who explained the beers between each course. Read on for how that all went down and behold my terrible, hastily taken photos!
Llapingachos, Chorizo, Peanut Aji // Beer Canelazo & Parade IPA 6%
Before the food began, we were treated to a welcome drink in the shape of a Canelazo - a hot alcoholic drink made up of mezcal, rum, cinnamon, sugar, naranjilla (a citrus fruit found in South America and, in this case, beer! Beak’s Parade was used in this take on a canelazo and it was a perfect introduction to the evening and as delicious as you’d imagine combining all of those ingredients is. We’d not long arrived from the bracing cold outside so a warming beverage hit the spot. You can see the empty cup in the top left of the image to see how much I enjoyed it.
We were also given a glass of Parade to accompany the first course, it’s arguably my favourite core beer of all time so we were off to a flyer.
The first dish was llapingachos - potato cakes filled with cheese, chorizo, and beetroot, and drizzled with a spicy peanut chilli sauce. Extra chorizo was sprinkled on top before a tiny fried egg finished off the plate. It was a lovely, hearty plate of food that I could imagine eating for brunch every day for the rest of my life.
The pineapple and citrus flavours from Parade worked really well against the richness of the food resulting in me clearing my plate in next to no time.
Langoustines Al Ajillo, Oyster Ceviche & Chifles //
Olia Pastry Sour 6%
After having two drinks with one dish, course two saw us have one beer with two dishes. Flip reverse it.
Food-wise we had oyster ceviche and chifles (fried plantain chips - not pictured) followed by langoustines al ajillo.
The oyster ceviche was a mix of garlic, herbs, onion, tomato and some of the beer whereas the langoustine was covered in an ajillo sauce (garlic, herbs and chillies).
The ceviche was delicious and reminded me a bit of a Bloody Mary with more salinity whereas the langoustine was super light and refreshing.
The beer was Olia - a pastry sour made with raspberry, cherry, blackcurrant, vanilla and almond that smelled exactly like a bakwell tart and drank like fruit juice. It was a great pairing that worked well with the salt and chilli in the dishes.
Humitas, Tamarillo Pumpkin, Lupin Aji & Oyster Mushrooms //
Parade IPA 6%
Dish three saw the arrival of humitas - steamed and fried corn cakes accompanied by guacamole and a vibrant sauce made with rocoto chilli, Andean tomatoes and pumpkin. The plate was finished with some chargrilled oyster mushrooms dressed with spices.
I’ve never really enjoyed mushrooms as I just can’t abide the texture but these were probably some of the best I’ve had - the charring from the grill gave them a crunchy texture and smokey flavour that I actually enjoyed.
The humitas would make perfect hangover food - a beautiful carby sponge capable of soaking up the delicious sauce garnishing the plate. Loading your fork up with a bit of every ingredient for the perfect mouthful was the way to eat this dish as all of the flavours bounced off each other beautifully.
Another Parade was the beer with this dish and whilst I was a tad disappointed to have a repeat beer, when the beer is as good as Parade, you can’t really complain, can you?
Middle White Pork Andean Fritada //
Hum Pale Ale 4.8%
The penultimate dish saw an Ecuadorian street food staple given a glow-up with some amazing local produce.
Fritada is The pork is cooked in a mix of boiling water, and orange juice with onion, garlic and cumin until the liquid is gone so it confits and browns. This version used delicious rare-breed pork and was served with boiled hominy corn, crunchy tostada and an agrio (a bittersweet salsa made from panela, chilli, onion, herbs and beer). It was finished off with some local pumpkin and a green sauce made with spinach.
The idea here was to add everything to your plate and mix it all together before tucking in. The pork was cooked wonderfully and all of the other components were delicious but combined made the dish much more than the sum of its parts. The slight bite of the pork and pumpkin with the softness of the hominy corn, the heat of the salsa, the earthiness of the sauce and the crunch of the tostada gave this dish so much texture that I ate mine very, very quickly. I gladly hoovered up the remains from my wife’s plate (she loved it also but she is very small and was very full and not a pig like me).
We were given a glass of Beak’s Hum with this course - a pale ale with a savoury bite that went well with the rich pork.
Panela & Pineapple //
Coco Imperial Stout 11%
The final dish of the evening was a rather generously sized dessert.
A cross between a sponge cake and a cheesecake served with grilled pineapple and topped with cream and an absolutely incredible vanilla custard. I was somehow given two large pieces that I dutifully gobbled down with gusto. Despite it looking huge, it was so light that I polished it off in no time.
Dessert was served with the beer of the evening in Coco - an imperial stout made with heaps of coconut, coffee, cocoa powder and vanilla. I’d drank a can of this at home a few weeks ago as I’d received it in my Beak Social Club delivery so was delighted to get to drink it again. It’s just an absolutely daft beer with so many adjuncts it masks the 11% deceptively well.
The second seating began arriving as we received dessert and as we had the window seat, we guzzled down our beers to free up our table and headed back out into the cold of the night, bellies full and smiles on our faces.
