A few years ago, I was taken out for dinner at a high end Montreal restaurant by my boyfriend at the time for my birthday. He had a surprise in store for me after dinner and had asked me to refrain from drinking the habitual glass(es) of wine I would have with a meal of this calibre. I was a little disappointed, but reluctantly agreed despite his refusal to explain why. This was the night I delightedly discovered juice pairings.
Juice pairings are exactly what they sound like: a series of carefully prepared non-alcoholic cocktails to accompany a meal. If you haven't heard about them, you should pay closer attention as several Michelin-starred restaurants (e.g. Eleven Madison Park in NYC or Clove Club in London) are now starting to offer them across North America and Europe.
The business rationale sounds very compelling to me. Wine pairings are great, but they come with many limitations. Expecting mothers, teetotalers or young adults accompanying their families on culinary journeys all sound like the perfect target market for this new trend. In a world where molecular cuisine is also taking an increasing amount of space, they allow chefs to experiment with even more interesting and exciting textures and flavours. Finally, juice pairings can also help an increasingly health-conscious group of consumers take a night off from alcohol. To be clear, I do not expect juice pairings to ever pose a real threat to the traditional wine pairing, but I think it will be a nice addition to an increasing number of dinner tables in the future and would help restaurants increase their profit margins.
What do you think? Would you order a juice pairing for your next night out? How important will this trend be in the next 10 years?
Carl
P.S: In case you were wondering, the surprise was an escape room followed by an outing at a cocktail lounge. We won the escape room by 30 seconds despite it being designed for teams of 4+ people, and I conceded to him that he was right. We would likely have not been able to make it through had I had some wine beforehand.
Carl,
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this! I am familiar with the mocktail trend. I've also seen high-end restaurants make lovely juice blends for breakfast -- usually some combination of kale/banana/mango and then orange/ginger/apple.
But I love the idea of a juice pairing. The reasons you mentioned are great: allowing those who are taking the night off or being in a group that doesn't drink to enjoy the full culinary experience. And allowing chefs more creativity with the flavors and textures on the menu is always good. I think there's an additional benefit here: teaching people how to taste and practice appreciation for food/beverage pairings.
Tasting is not just an enjoyable one-off experience. It's a skill. It takes practice and improves over time. Teaching people how to have a mindful drinking experience will be rewarding whether that's for coffee, tea, wine, beer, whiskeys, cocktails, etc. The practice of looking at the color, smelling it, sipping it. And then seeing how it changes with food and how food changes it. As a brewer, I love that this is a trend now because I think it helps create a more conscious market who can appreciate my beer even more. This reason is less of an immediate bottom line payoff and more of a cultural movement. I'm hoping that pairings of all kinds are going to increase in popularity so that we all get to enjoy more of what we love together.
Carl, love this story!
ReplyDeleteSeveral thoughts come to mind in reading about your experience.
The first is around the communal aspect of dining and breaking bread. I've been part of several celebratory or informal dinners where the decision to partake in alcoholic beverages feels like an opt-out versus opt-in. This is especially tricky, as you called out, in more formal dining settings where consistency is expected among all diners. I like the idea of having juice pairings as an alternative for this reason. I'm curious if restaurants view juice pairings as a completely different experience, or if it can be mix-and-match. I'd be super interested to think about if one could start with wine pairings and move on to juice? As you rightfully called out, there are so many more possibilities created for consumers with this option.
The more economic side of my brain immediately jumps to pricing. Given what we've studied about the costs involved in creating wine, I find it extremely hard to imagine a pricing structure that puts juice pairings at more than 25% of the cost of the wine pairing. And because we know restaurants buy at wholesale prices, I wonder what the economics would look like. It'd be interesting to think on a per unit basis - as in, if even one person who would have picked the wine pairing went with the juice pairing (as you did with your boyfriend) how much of a profit hit does that imply for the restaurant? There are so many trade-offs!
Carl-
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great post! When Christina and I traveled to Copenhagen last Thanksgiving for our "Let's Eat a Bunch of Food That We Can't Afford Trip," we noticed a number of juice and kombucha pairings as well. We managed to snag a reservation at two of the world's top five restaurants and both had a juice pairing in addition to one or more wine pairings.
We ended up having one of us order the wine pairing and one of us order the juice pairing, and honestly I think we both liked a majority of the juice pairings more! A huge trend at many of these top restaurants is trying to do more fermentation, as it makes use of ingredients or byproducts which otherwise may be wasted. As a result, they've all gotten very good at it and you're able to taste some amazing juices, kefirs, and kombuchas.
While I don't know that I'll ever fully abandon the wine pairing, if you are out with someone you're comfortable sharing a drink with I would highly recommend you split one juice pairing and one wine pairing. You're able to try an even wider range of things and find some truly amazing flavors!