It’s not exactly news that pizza and beer are a match made in heaven. But the debut of a San Ramon restaurant dedicated to figuring out which beer goes best with which pie just may be.
The Tri-Valley’s Pairfield Pizza and Pints aims to elevate the pizza-and-beer experience with curated combos, straight from the mind of owner Jeff Farlow, the former culinary director at Wente Vineyards. Farlow spent years pairing wine and small plates for the Livermore winery, but, he says, “my heart was in beer.”
The new eatery at the city’s Diablo Plaza shopping center opened Aug. 26 with a lineup of craft beer that hails from within 90 minutes drive of San Ramon. “A lot of people don’t realize how many amazing craft breweries are here,” he says, so many, in fact, the hard part was narrowing the options down to 24 taps.
The menu provides recommended beer pairing for each dish, brown ale with the crispy chicken wings and their gingered sweet chili sauce, for example, and pale ale for the ricotta-topped Big Cheese pizza.
As with wine, the four key factors to consider in beer pairings include texture, acidity, alcohol and body, he explains. Farlow suggests pairing the Thai Dyed pizza with pineapple cider, a sweeter beverage that balances out the richness and spiciness of the pizza’s green coconut curry sauce, and the pepperoni and fennel-pork meatball-topped Italian Job with a pint of hefeweizen.
Still to come: monthly beermaker dinners and tasting flights.
Details: Open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday-Monday (until 10 p.m. weekends, closed Tuesday-Wednesday) at 2408 Twin Creeks Drive in San Ramon; pairfieldpizza.com.
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