Greetings, At the Table
As usual, I have a lot of completely random stuff to talk about this week. Let’s start with last Thursday night when I met up with some friends to attend a charity dinner at Arnold’s for this year’s Bockfest. The event was marketed as a beefsteak dinner, though it was nothing like the old-school feeding frenzies of yore with their unlimited piles of meat that attendees would devour with their hands while wearing aprons to protect their clothing from the jus that bled down their chins.
Instead, Arnold’s new executive chef Randi Roberts, with help from former executive chef Kayla Robison, offered a four-course dinner with bock beer pairings from several local brewers. Cabbage stew was paired with a bready and delicious maibock from Christian Moerlein (which, by the way, recently introduced a beautiful new can design), a substantial Avril-Bleh bratwurst arrived on a bed of garlic and leek mashed potatoes with the Road Bock from Fifty West, and bock-beer-braised short ribs made for a tasty beef stroganoff.