All in the best possible taste

Pairing beer with food is a great idea, says ADAM EDWARDS, as long as traditional British grub is on the menu.

Beer with Food week is almost upon us, which is both good and bad news.

The good news is that there is no greater cause for gastronomic celebration than a glass of best bitter and a plate of ham and eggs.

Is there a finer fusion than a cold lager and a ploughman's?Who can challenge the amalgam of Guinness and a bacon butty?

Over the last half-century the British licensee has developed, mostly by trial and error and, in particular, by careful monitoring of his or her customers, the best confection of booze and victuals known to beer-drinking man. His blackboard boasts organic bangers, home-made curries, crispy duck and all-day breakfasts that perfectly match the wonderful varieties of British ales.

The bad news is that not everyone is happy with this straightforward state of affairs.

There are those of somewhat more refined sensibilities who wish to combine a better class of fare with a different brew. The high-falutin' Continental-beer drinking class talk of stuffed sea-bass parcels joined with an amusing toffee lager or the Tofu burger as the perfect foil for a presumptuous glass of fizzy Trappist juice.

Unfortunately this enthusiasm for nouvelle pub grub and undrinkable wheat beers - akin to slaking one's thirst with a family pack of soggy Cornflakes - has spread outside the rarefied world of the metropolitan gourmet.

It has filtered down through the system so that bourgeois establishments throughout the country now consider the correct accompaniment to a handle of wallop as that which is attended by "jus", dipping sauce and Parmesan shavings.

Worse still, the plain butty - English beer's kissing cousin - is now served in our more upmarket boozers in a fancy ciabatta roll with radiccio lettuce.

There is a common misconception among smart publicans that the over-rated Italian sawdust bread is the right stuff to do justice to a hand-pulled pint of slosh. They are wrong. Just as they were wrong 10 years ago when they insisted on making sandwiches from frozen French baguettes with cotton wool innards.

A ciabatta sanger is disliked by women who think of it as crude and rough, who can't get their mouths around it and would anyway rather have the risotto. While all men I know prefer a classic "greasy spoon" sandwich made from a brace of thick cut white slices. And neither male nor female drinker is interested in the co-habitant red lettuce, which is nothing more than an edible (some would say inedible) doily served by a publican with an out-stretched pinkie.

On the other hand, the epicurean plus points of a swift half with a cheese and onion toasted sandwich and a foaming pint of warming, real ale accompanied by a Scotch egg are unchallenged.

So I say "Hooray" to Beer With Food Week.

Let's celebrate the white bread sandwich's union with bitter.Let's cheer ham 'n' eggs, scampi 'n' chips and anything else with an apostrophe before and after the conjunction that sits well with the amber nectar.

And let's use the week to try to get licensees to improve these classic pub-grub dishes, to use local organic meat, free-range eggs, more olive oil and fewer microwaves instead of insisting on combining Tuscan crusts with foreign beers that have more froth up top than Jordan.

Holding out the olive branch

While on the subject of beer and food I note that one exotic foodstuff has, amazingly slipped into the saloon bar without fanfare - the humble olive.

Philip "Boot" Christopherson, owner of Nibblers, the food company that supplies the licensed trade with salted almonds, Swedish salamis and other rare accompaniments to alcoholic refreshment, claims sales of the salty oval of protein have increased by 4,000% in little more than 10 years.

"Three years ago we were selling one variety of olive now we offer 10 varieties," he said. "It has become almost our largest seller."

It was not long ago that the Mediterranean nibble was a pariah in Blighty. It was the personification of "nasty foreign muck". In the second half of the 20th century, if somebody so much as suggested an olive with, or in, a drink the cry went up to "hold the fruit". The 21st century shout now is to "bring the tree".

The French come to the rescue

At last there is a potion to stop hangovers and make alcohol disappear from the system six times faster than usual. "Security Feel Better" is a French invention that comes in a tiny bottle and is recommended for use before, during or after a heavy session. "The product should work within 45 minutes to prevent hangovers," according to the Normandy-based maker, PNN.

About time too, I say. Boffins have sorted those who want sex without recriminations (Viagra and the pill); doctors can cut away the flabby bits of the obese; the law has decriminalised marijuana, and gamblers have a new lease of life with the internet. It is only the drinkers who, at least until Security Feel Better appeared, have been left behind by the modern world.