By: Jennifer Duff
Capital
Cooking Contributor
Good beer
and good food can be hard to find, especially if you live outside the
District. But for all you Maryland
residents, look no further – DuClaw
Brewing Company just revamped it’s menu and is offering a “gastropub”
experience closer to your front door. DuClaw Brewing Company is the #1 craft
brewery in Maryland with restaurant locations in Baltimore, Bel Air, Bowie and
Anne Arundel. And they just stepped up their
game by pairing new, seasonal fare with their delicious handcrafted brews. We had the opportunity to go try the new menu
items created by Chef Giovanni Leopardi and they did not
disappoint.
I had never been to DuClaw
Brewing Company before, and I was amazed at all the beers they served on
tap. We did a beer tasting, which was an
experience unto itself. They literally
have a beer for everybody. They have
beers ranging from hoppy pale ales, to sweeter Belgium-style beers, and darker stouts
and porters – all made at their brewery up in Abingdon, MD.
After much tasting and deliberation, I settled on my top 3 beer
favorites –Old Flame (a copper strong ale), Mysterim (a Belgian Spiced Ale), and HellRazer (a medium-bodied IPA).
An honorable mention goes to Sweet
Baby Jesus based on name alone. How
can a fun beer name like that not get the recognition it deserves? Anyway, after all that hard work, I had worked up an appetite and it was time
to enjoy some food.
We started off with the Duck Fat Fries which were served with three
types of dipping sauces – vinegar aioli, white truffle aioli, and harissa
aioli. The fries were delicious – golden,
crispy and perfectly salted – a great accompaniment to a pint of beer. The dipping sauces were creamy and flavorful,
I really liked the vinegar aioli sauce which gave the fries a malty, bitter finish.
Next, we decided to try the new
Pepperjack Chorizo Croquettes, little potato doughballs stuffed with chorizo
and cheese and fried until crispy. The croquettes
were good, but they could have been a little more cheesy and a little less
potato-y. I was not a fan of the marinara
sauce… I think it would have been better to serve the croquettes with a spicy
dip that paired with the pepperjack cheese. The marinara sauce completely overpowered the flavor of the croquette.
To save room for dessert, we decided to split an order of the “Pick
Three Sliders” for our meal and chose the crab cake, meatball and ahi tuna
sliders. The meatball slider was super
tasty, very cheesy and dense like a meatball sandwich should be. The ahi tuna slider was also very good and
the ginger wasabi mayo gave the sandwich a little ‘kick.’ The crab cake slider was a bit bland and
needed something more. Oh well, two
scores, one miss. Sometimes that
happens.
And then came dessert. It was
not your typical dessert… it was Xango… a banana cheesecake wrapped in a
tortilla shell, lightly fried and then drizzled with caramel. It was absolutely fantastic. It was like a fun carnival treat with a
creamy, smooth filling and a tropical taste.
I would have never ordered this type of dessert – I’m more
of a chocolate-loving girl – but this was phenomenal.
Overall, DuClaw Brewing Company offered some tasty treats to go with
their extensive selection of handcrafted brews.
If I lived in Maryland, I think I would be there every week, sampling
their new seasonal beers and munching on Duck Fat Fries. It's probably best that I live in Virginia... for the sake of my 'skinny jeans.'
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