If you’re anything like us, you’ve been waiting for Chicago’s Restaurant Week with bated breath. There are few things nearer and dearer to a Chicagoans heart during the winter months then a great meal. Restaurant Week, the annual 14-day culinary celebration is a chance for city-dwellers to climb out from their warm apartments and venture to one of the 250 participating restaurants to experience special prix fixe menus starting at $22 for lunch and $33 and/or $44 for dinner. Amazing.

Because we firmly believe in the power of beer to elevate a dining experience to a whole new level, the beer experts at Lakeshore Beverage have assembled a beer and food pairing guide with the help of Goose Island’s fantastic craft beer.

Goose Island and Restaurant Week

As the official sponsor of Restaurant Week, Goose Island wanted to ensure that Chicagoans in need are eating well too. Anytime a Goose Island beer is purchased during the week at participating restaurants, the brewery will donate a meal to those in need through the Greater Chicago Food Despository!

The Lakeshore Beverage Restaurant Week Food and Beer Pairing Guide:

Quick Links: Click the links below to scroll directly to each beer!

Goose Island 312 Urban Wheat Ale

Goose Island 312 Urban Pale Ale

Goose Island India Pale Ale

Goose Island Sofie

Goose Island Matilda

Goose Island Green Line

Goose Island 312 Urban Wheat Ale with Anthony Boutsikakis

The Beer: This is Goose Island 312 Urban Wheat — the one and only. It’s a great American-style wheat beer, as with any beer of that style, it pours with a little haze because it’s unfiltered. It’s a Chicago classic.

Flavor Profiles: 312 is an easily accessible beer and once you bring it up to your nose you can’t miss that big, bready, malty foam. You get some toasty malt aroma to it, still rather light in the full spectrum of things but pretty noticeable for an easygoing beer like this. Once you take a sip it follows through on what you smell and features a light, bready body with light carbonation. It’s a very refreshing beer.

Food Pairing Suggestions: This is a great beer for food pairing because it’s so versatile. Because it’s a lighter beer, you definitely want to stick to lighter dishes. You don’t want the meal overtaking the beer, and you don’t want the beer to over take the meal — you want them complimenting each other. I like 312 wheat with chicken, fish, or a salad. Something with a bit of spice character to it, to compliment the lightly spiced character of the beer.

I like 312 wheat with chicken, fish, or a salad. Something with a bit of spice character to it, to compliment the lightly spiced character of the beer.

Food and Beer Pairing Philosophy: My thinking is definitely progression; as you move through the meal, start easy and work your way up. A big rule of thumb is to not let any dish or beer overtake the other. You don’t want a big, bold IPA with a light salad because you won’t get the best out of both. On the flipside, if you have 312 Urban Wheat with a big, spicy dish, you’re not going to get the flavor of the beer. I like to pair things that are on the same playing field.

Goose Island 312 Urban Pale Ale with Nikki Lewis

The Beer: 312 Urban Pale Ale features a malt base of the grain. It’s about 5.4% alcohol and is a deliciously easy, sessionable, drinkable ale.

Flavor Profiles: I get a bit of apricot and citrus aromas on the nose  and a grainy, bready sweetness. You get a really balanced flavor: some grain, and then some hops, some citrus, then a tiny bit of bitterness at the end that fades quickly.  The hops give it a little punch, but it doesn’t linger very long.

Food Pairing Suggestions: I would  pair 312 Urban Pale Ale with lighter dishes like a caprese salad or lightly fried dish like a crab cake. Caprese salad works really well because the citrus from the tomatoes pairs with the citrus in the beer and the creaminess in the mozzarella brings out some of the spicier notes of the hops, and the beer will cut through the fattiness of the cheese. And then the basil will also bring out the notes of the hops in the beer.

In the case of crab cake, you get the delicateness of fish which balances the delicateness of the beer, and then the tiny bit of citrus in the beer helps bring out the flavors of the fish. Just like how everyone likes to have a little lemon on their fish.The carbonation allows it to play well with fatty dishes, and cleanse the palate.

I would  pair 312 Urban Pale Ale with lighter dishes like a caprese salad or lightly fried dish like a crab cake.

Food and Beer Pairing Philosophy: Well I think that complimenting and contrasting are both good ways of doing it. So if you want to, say, compliment the maltiness of a beer, you can compliment it with something else that has a touch of sweetness to it, or that really tastes bready. That would be a good compliment, a contrast would be a beer having a good malt background, pairing it with something spicy like Thai or Indian curry. The sweetness of the beer will tone down the spicyness of the dish. While the spicyness will then enhance the flavors of the hops in the beer. This doesn’t have the in-your-face sort of punch that IPA’s have, but that will really highlight the hops that are in the beer.

Goose Island Sofie with Chris Kolodziej

The Beer: Goose Island Sofie is one of the “sisters” from Goose Island’s vintage line. It is a Saison (Farmhouse Ale) and 20% of the beer is aged in wine barrels and 80% in stainless steel. The barrels give it a nice crisp, slightly tart beer. It’s a great crossover beer for wine drinkers, partially because of the wine-barrel-aging which imparts some of the flavors of the barrel and partly because of the wine flavors you get from the maturation process. It’s a nice jumping off point for people who are wine drinkers, or beer drinkers who are looking for something with a little bit higher carbonation, more complex and more subtle than your average pale ale.

Flavor Profiles: This beer is known for its notes of light peppercorn and orange peel. You get a little bit of that orange quality, and kind of buried in the back you get some of the wine minerality. You get a soft earthiness, an ester-y quality from the yeast, and the carbonation is pretty good, the tight little bubbles rising from the bottom. It’s a palate cleansing beer. It’s very lively in the mouth.

Food Pairing Suggestions: Sofie is a great first course beer. I love pairing this with charcuterie plates. It goes well with goat cheeses and fattier meats because it can cut through that fat, and you won’t be weighed down by it. Sofie is citric and light, and you want to get all that. Any sort of salad, roasted vegetables, ricotta salada or ceviche would go really well with it.

I love pairing this with charcuterie plates… and any sort of salad, roasted vegetables, ricotta salada or ceviche would go really well with it.

Food and Beer Pairing Philosophy: Keep It Simple Stupid. There are two ways people look at beer pairings; you can contrast to create something different, or compliment and match similar flavors with similar flavors. If you’re eating roasted meat, like a pork butt with a heavy char, then you’ll want something more along the lines of a dry stout. If you’re drinking something lighter, pair it with a lighter dish. If you pair simple, elegant, well done beers with simple, elegant, well done food, you can’t go wrong.

Goose Island Green Line with Laura Weber

The Beer: Green Line is Goose Island’s American Pale Ale. It’s brewed in Chicago only, for Chicago only, and is only on draft. It’s a part of Goose Island’s green, environmentally sustainable initiative. In order to keep the environmental footprint small for Goose Island, and have miminal impact on the environement, Green Line is only available in the Chicago-land area and uses minimal packaging.

The style is American Pale Ale, with millennium hops, some Mt. Hood hops, and some zythos hops. It’s a great entry-level craft beer because it’s really drinkable, meant to be really accessible and to be able to have a few of them.

Flavor Profiles: You smell a little bit of citrus, and you also get a little bit of biscuity dryness that comes from the malt.  Also, the hops  provide a nice spiciness on your tongue. It finishes really dry so you are ready for another sip. The spicyness and hop aroma is balanced with malt, so it won’t overpower the beer or your senses. You don’t have that lingering hop taste. It’s really great for restaurant week because it goes well with food, and it won’t blow out your palate so you can have a few.

Food Pairing Suggestions: Green Line goes well with a wide variety of food because it’s so accessible. But it goes especially well with Gastropub foods — great burgers, brie, aged cheddar. It would also go wonderfully with a meat pie. Anything earthy. The hops in it aren’t overpowering, but there are enough there to cut through some of that fattiness. So it won’t be too rich from the food and will balance well. The maltiness in the beer will bring out the sweetness in the food.

Green Line goes especially well with Gastropub foods — great burgers, brie, aged cheddar. It would also go wonderfully with a meat pie. Anything earthy.

Food and Beer Pairing Philosophy: I think there are two really easy ways to do it. If you’re starting out, start with the menu description of the beer or ask your server for an explanation. You can then look to compliment the flavors in your beer to flavors on the menus dishes. Look for similar descriptions and flavor profiles.

Goose Island India Pale Ale with Addison Ashbaugh

The Beer: Goose Island’s IPA, or India Pale Ale is a British-style ale that harkens back to a time when there was a lot more hops put into beer, to create a preservative, so it would handle the journey to wherever it was going. Hops have a natural preservative in their acids. This beer is a little more bourbon/copper in color, rather than being more golden and it’s almost 6% alcohol, so it’s not as big as some of the West Coast style IPAs.

Flavor Profiles: Goose Island IPA is a great gateway to stronger beers, because it has a nice malt backbone, a little caramel which really rounds out the beer and prevents it from being too one-dimensional. The amount of hops that are involved and the amount of malt that is involved also leave it balanced. Immediately on the nose you get a little bit of the floral hop aroma, just a little bit of citrus and you get some of the biscuit flavor from the malt, you get a bit of baking spice or allspice and a more mellow spice flavor.

Food Pairing Suggestions: The hops in the beer cut through stuff that’s a bit fattier so it works well with your heavier red meats, pork belly, hamburgers and the English-style malts and hops are more on the earthier side which would compliment well. It would also work well besides spicier Mexican food because the palate is very clean, and the beer can cut away some of that residual spice. What I think Goose Island does well is that they have shown a really great example of an IPA, that is fresh and brewed in Chicago.

Works well with your heavier red meats, pork belly, hamburgers… it would also work well besides spicier Mexican food.

Food and Beer Pairing Philosophy: Quite often I’ll order the beer first because it gets the palate wet and makes me more ready to eat. Then I’ll pick a style that I want to drink, then pair my food appropriately. Let’s say I grabbed this beer, some of the things I’d think of eating would be maybe things that have a bit of citrus to them, since this is a bit more on the malty side, and then the citrus would come from the dish and bring out that side of the beer more. Think about the depth of flavors and the layers of what you are tasting and then pair that with appropriate flavors and layers in the food.

I also want to say that I think every person’s palate is unique, what I taste in this beer will be slightly different from what you taste in this beer, so the best thing to do is to go with your gut, go with your instincts. Trust your palate.

Goose Island Matilda with Nate Cox

The Beer: Goose Island Matilda is a Belgian-Style Pale Ale with a nice amber color and deep, rich, Belgian spice. Goose Island has its own pitched Belgian-Style yeast, here in Chicago. Fun Fact. Goose Island has a couple of “Chicago Yeast Strains” that they started back in 1988.

Flavor Profiles: First thing that will hit you is the nose. Typically Belgian beers have a lot of carbonation, so the first thing that you’ll notice is the effervescence, the aroma, you’ll start smelling what they call “esters” which is a clove-spice aroma and the after effect of the carbonation process of the yeast. Matilda sits right in the middle of light and dark — it’s not dark based on the malt content, nor is it light based on the malt content. It’s right in the middle, it uses some amber and caramel malts, which gives it that nice kind of caramel feeling.

Food Pairing Suggestions: Well the old adage for wine pairings is that, “darker meats go with reds, lighter meats go with whites” with beer, you really open it up. You can contrast the pairing, doing something heavy with something light, kind of a rich/savory dish with something light to bring out those flavors and then cleanse the palate for the next bite, or you can do equal pairs and match power to power, like a big and robust with a hearty and savory dish. What’s great about Belgian-Style ales is that because of that mix, that carbonation factor, it does many of those things all at once. You’ve got the carbonation and spice to cleanse the palate, to cut some of those big, savory flavors. It’s still light enough where it still pairs with light, citrusy dishes.

With Matilda, you get “baking spices” nutmeg, clove, so something as savory as pork tenderloin, with a light demi-glase, maybe some bleu cheese, or apricot would be great. I enjoy dessert, so I like this with carrot cake. It’s got that cinnamon, that richness, that nutmeg flavor, and then the carbonation from the beer cleanses each bite.

Something as savory as pork tenderloin, with a light demi-glase, maybe some bleu cheese, or apricot would be great. I enjoy dessert, so I like this with carrot cake.

Food and Beer Pairing Philosophy: I approach it very simply: what food do you like? What beer do you like? It’s that simple. There are no wrong pairings at all.

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