Wines in Restaurants, Part 1: The Seafood Restaurant, St Andrews

Wine and food matching is a skill, no doubt about that, but often bastardised by back labels on bottles and amateurish tasting notes. “A perfect match for roasts and grills”, “a perfect accompaniment to meat and cheese” and one of my favourites, “Enjoy this wine with friends and a woodfired pizza” – on a Sauvignon Blanc?! The questions you then have include “roast and grilled what?” Does a grilled haddock go with this Chilean Cabernet better or worse than a grilled sirloin? Also, “if a wine is recommended to be drunk with friends and a woodfired pizza”, will it be terrible if I’m drinking it on my own, in a bedsit with a extra cheesy meat feast from Pizza Hut?

Go to a restaurant however, particularly where a producer’s wine is being shown and there is a fixed menu, and you would expect things to be spot on. All the flavour components of the meal should compliment the wine and vice versa. If you want to make a food and wine pairing sing and impress all the guests, the easiest way to do it is to take the wines, get the chef and sommelier to taste the wines, and design a dish to match the wine being drunk with that course. So often, however, it would appear that the combinations are so far out that you begin to wonder if the chef had actually tried the wine before constructing the meal, and if he did, it is more than likely he had just smoked half a pack of Lambert & Butler before his shift. I’ve had some terrible pairings before. A few years ago champagne paired with halibut was fine, but the bed of vanilla mashed potatoes totally messed it all up, creating an abomination of flavours rivalled only by the deep fried Mars Bar.

I recently went to the Seafood Restaurant in St Andrews for a dinner which was to show the wines of Paul Jaboulet Aine. I’ve written about these wines before, so won’t go into them now, but instead of a tailored meal, this dinner was comprised of dishes from the main menu. Nothing was created specially for the evening, just a selection of dishes picked perfectly, and I mean perfectly, by the sommelier and the chef. They totally nailed it with a series of dishes that not only were delicious, but improved, and were improved by, the wines.

The first wine was the 2008 Cotes du Rhone Parallele 45 Blanc which went superbly with a Lemon and Coriander Pittenweem Crab with sweetcorn puree and tomato fondue. Initially I had thought that the sweeter aroma from the wine would dominate the subtle flavours of the crab, but when eaten with the tomato fondue everything fell into place. The sweeter flavour from the tomato went well with the similar aromas of the wine, and the mildly oily texture of the wine balanced out the creamy crab.

Moving onto a smoked haddock rarebit with creamed leeks and pancetta and a wholegrain mustard dressing, this needed a bigger wine. And it got it with the 2006 Crozes Hermitage Mules Blanche. The smoky oak on the wine hit the spot with the fish, and the wines vegetal hints matched the leek flavours and spice of the mustard. The fish was moist with crisp edges which gave a meaty element that complimented the fuller, bolder wine perfectly.

Then came the one part that could have screwed the whole thing up. A fish dish with red wine, the 2006 Crozes Hermitage Domaine de Thalabert. As Jaboulet is a Rhone producer, you have to show their red wines at such a dinner. The team at the Seafood Restaurant could have played it safe and stuck on a bit of meat, venison, beef, anything really, but instead we were given a grilled fillet of Halibut with parmentier potatoes, shiitake mushrooms, oxtail (see, a little meat!) and a garlic puree reduction.

You noticed garlic immediately, but with a rich, herby element on the wine counter balancing with that element well. The fish was lovely, and not overpowered by the red fruit from the wine, but obviously the oxtail helped give the dish a bit of weight, to match the darker secondary flavours of the wine. Although there was a little too much tannin on the wine, which age would have softened, this was an excellent paring.

A cheese course with the 2004 Hermitage La Petite Chapelle was fun. A selection of five cheeses with five accompaniments was presented. Mull Cheddar with almonds, Criffle and honeycomb, Scottish Brie and salad with truffle oil, Strathton Blue and Quince jelly and finally Lanark Blue and pickled walnut were the choices we had and we compared them to the wine, with, in my opinion, the Criffle and honeycomb was the perfect combination to match the wine. But what this course did was take a ‘serious’ wine and make it fun! A group of fully paid up wine buffs playing with their food over some lovely wine must have been a sight to see for our fellow diners. It was a great choice.

Finally the 2007 Muscat de Beaumes de Venise La Chant de Griolles came with vanilla and honey poached pear with liquorice crème brulee, liquorice sponge and Frangelico foam. I don’t like this wine, never have, and the thought of a liquorice crème brulee filled me with dread. This course however was fabulous. The pear went well with the lemony flavours from the glass, and the wine’s spice and honey flavours worked with the vanilla element. But the harsher elements of the wine, which normally puts me off it, were matched with the darker flavours of the liquorice crème brulee and liquorice sponge. On their own, the two components were not brilliant, but together you had such a good match! Throw in the pear to the liquorice and wine and you had a culinary delight.

A lot of ‘sommeliers’ are nothing more than wine waiters. They may have a fancy job title, but they don’t do a very good job and you might as well pick your wines with ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe’. The Seafood Restaurant in St Andrews have talented wine staff, and great chefs. And they show it isn’t difficult to get food and wine matching right, you just need to hire the right staff. After all, it was the Seafood Restaurant that served me vanilla mash!

Part two of this article will look further at the problems of the restaurant wine list, with examples of the good, the bad and the totally hopeless