Ale and Beer

Ales and Beer

Driving back from Florence to our self catering cottage in Tuscany, we stopped at a random restaurant alongside the road between towns and had a wonderful multi-course Florentine style Italian meal. In Cefalu, Sicily, we went to a restaurant with the hosts of our self catering apartment and had artichokes served in a half dozen different ways. At another Cefalu restaurant we had our first arancinis.

At a monastary in France we dined on exquisite cutlets, sampled a dozen cheeses, and imbibed their wines. At a guest house in Germany we ate open fire cooked meats and spaetzle. At Thornbury Castle in England we feasted on fish and veal, and in Arundel we had Mum's Day Sunday roast with vegetables. In Ireland, near Scull, during the mad cow scare, we had filet mignon and chips.

As we have travelled, we have eaten well. But I have not a single recipe to recommend or share with you . Regarding the food, my recommendation is to trust the host and partake of their specials and recommendations.

What I have taken note of, are beer halls and pubs and their offerings of ale and beer. Pub food is somewhat secondary to having a good brew to drink while eating, although fish and chips prepared fresh are very tasty and go well with a pint or two. It is great to drink while reflecting on the history of a tavern or a town, all the while engaged in conversation with a local proudly sharing local history with an American tourist.

I had a pint of ale and a chat with the retired jockey who owned Smith's Arms, advertising itself as the smallest pub in England. He is the young man in the picture in the glasses holding the cane that he needs because of a racing injury that ended his career.

The story is that the King stopped at the smithy for work on a loose horse shoe, asked for ale while there to be told that the smithy had no license to sell beer. So the king granted the smithy a license on the spot. Thus the smithy could legally provide ale to the king from his personal stock. And the smithy has been a pub ever since.

Following the advice I was given by a fellow worker in Illinois when stopping to have a beer, I always look for a good local beer, and if no local beer is available, to ask for the most popular beer drank by local regulars. In the U.S. that led me at various times to Stroh's, Coors, Olympia, Shiner Bock and others.

Translated to European travels, I discovered that in Germany almost every town or establishment of size had its own offering. I calculated that if I drank a different beer every day of the year, that by the end of the year there would be new offerings and that I would have to start over.

In Ireland there were fewer options, but there was Harp and Guinness, and Guinness is a pretty good place to start and end. After a trip to Ireland I went to my regular watering hole and ordered a draft Budweiser only to send it back because I was sure it had been watered down. It hadn't. But after weeks of Guinness it tasted almost like water.

One pub in Ireland was called the Kings Head, purportedly so named because an early proprietor of the pub purchased it with his earnings from beheading King Charles. My pint did have a head on it.

On our most recent trip to London, my daughter and I quaffed a pint at the John Snow Tavern, at the site of the notorious water pump from which cholera spread in Soho in 1854. He is the doctor who figured out the source and spread of the cholera and stopped the epidemic by removing the pump handle.

In Kilorglin, Ireland, I had the opportunity to throw darts with a couple of locals. To my slight surprise, I discovered that the loser had to buy a pint for the winner. I was even more surprised that I was the winner because my opponent carried his own personal set of darts with him and did not use those provided by the pub. I probably violated some unwritten rule when I insisted that I buy him a pint instead.

Oxford, England, famous for its spires and colleges, is equally famous for its pubs. The Eagle and the Child, where Tolkien and other Inklings drank has an excellent assortment of draft brews, as does the White Horse which dates back to the 16th century. Nottingham England has the Ye Olde Trip to Jeruselem Inn, in a cave beneath Nottingham Castle, which served knights on their way to the crusades. I am pleased to report that they also serve modern day tourists.

Based on my travels, this all adds up to my recommending dark imported beers for local consumption. Guinness, Beck's Dark, and Modella Negra will do for starters, though Shiner Bock from Shiner, Texas also earns the right to sit with the imports.

Bon Appetite!