With their expansive culinary backgrounds, General Manager Dan Murray and Chef Marc Paavola enjoy collaborating with each other to bring the patrons of Bear Cave Brewing in Hopkins unique experiences. While they have fun with the restaurant’s everyday menu of elevated pub-style food, they get to be even more creative with the monthly dinner parties that take place from December through April.
“What Marc and I wanted to do was something a little bit more special and create a themed menu that would run throughout the slower parts of the year when we actually have the time to invest in an event like this,” says Dan. “So, rather than what you usually find with a wine pairing dinner, we wanted to really highlight our beers.”
These beer pairing dinners are held in the speakeasy on the lower level of the restaurant, and seating is capped at 24 guests. As soon as guests arrive, they are served an amuse-bouche, a plate with three different small hors d'oeuvres complemented by three different beers. Then, the brewer Ryan Kartes, along with Chef Marc, provide an overview of the beers and the food being served that evening.
Although it’s an elegant event, it’s in a relaxed atmosphere. “We're all here throughout the dinner, so we chat with everybody and make it a fun night,” says Dan. Everyone tends to mingle and make new friends and it gives Dan and Chef Marc a chance to get to know their customers a little bit better.
“Dan and I both come from fine dining backgrounds and even with the casual nature of Bear Cave, when we originally wrote the menu, we wanted to make sure that we were doing something different,” says Chef Marc. “I wanted it to be highly elevated, but since we're also a brewery pizzeria, it needed to be casual at the same time. Once that was done, we realized we were missing our true passion of pairing food and the hospitality of throwing parties.”
The tasting menus offered at most other places, they say, tend to be a reflection of either something that’s already on the menu, or they’re built off of an already existing menu. But, that’s not the case here.
“We pair the beer to unique dishes, and we're actually coming to the point now where we can kind of do the opposite and maybe have the brewer say, ‘I want to use these beers,’ and then actually put food to them,” says Dan. “So, we have a lot of fun challenges coming ahead of us.”
To add a little mystery to each dinner, there’s a secret theme to each menu. For instance, their holiday cheer classic menu reflected a French technique theme. “The foie gras tartlet with roasted beets and pickled apples was paired with its barely nutty English brown ale,” says Chef Marc. “The earthiness of the foie gras and the beets with pickled apple really went well with that beer. It tasted almost like a hazelnut beer although there were no nuts in it.”
Also on the menu was a sweet potato tarte tatin. “We paired that with a lardon salad and goat cheese foam, and the beer chosen was our rye IPA that was very highly pine aggressive,” says Chef Marc. “With the sweetness and the depth of the sweet potato, and the salad, it was spectacular.”
This month, the Valentine’s dinner will have a Scandinavian theme, although the actual menu is a secret for now. “It’s really interesting that we were actually able to sell out the last dinner when people didn't know what they were going to be eating,” says Dan. Of course, if someone lets them know ahead of time that they have dietary restrictions, they’ll gladly accommodate them.
When it comes to pairing beer with the various foods, they say it’s a lot easier than doing so with wine. “It's easy to grab a beer that goes with whatever you're eating,” says Chef Marc. “Wine can be more aggressive and it's more challenging to find the right wine for a specific situation. We’re also making 20 plus beers here, so we have a lot of options.”
Their goal is to satisfy everybody's palate while at the same time introducing them to beers they might not otherwise drink. “We're very diligent and thoughtful about how the food and beer are going to interact,” says Dan.
Another interesting development is their new partnership with The Vine Room. “We're going to be adding on a dinner for their club members to do a wine pairing with one of our beer dinner menus,” he says. “That's going to be really fun as well.”
In addition to these special dinners, Bear Cave Brewing offers many other fun events such as comedy nights, bingo, trivia nights, family movie nights, speed dating and live music.
To learn more, and to buy tickets for one of these special monthly dinners, go to BearCaveBrewing.com.
1201 Mainstreet, Hopkins | 952-426-3214