Seafood focus: Beer and Food matching - what's nice with rice?

Sushi is one of those dishes I've never really 'got' - a shocking admission for a sophisticated food writer, I know, but I've always thought that 'fried-with-chips' works a damn sight better than 'raw-with-rice'.

So, when I was invited to take part in a beer and sushi matching, my main concern was that the subtleties of the chef's art would be lost on me. However, while they are still a long way from being a pub mainstay, sushi and other Japanese dishes are undoubtedly moving more into the mainstream.

When I turned up at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, West London, I was somewhat re-assured to bump into the hotel's executive chef Steve Munkley, a stalwart of the Craft Guild of Chefs and an old friend of The Publican.

Steve and sushi chef Ricky Idris has been given the onerous task of working their way through eleven different beers and coming up with sushi recipes to match them. "It was tough," grinned Steve, "but give a chef a few beers and we usually come up with some inspiration."

To make it more challenging, the range of beers selected veered away from traditional Japanese styles with a high rice content, in favour of beers from Germany, Holland, Mexico, Czech Republic, Belgium, Alsace and the UK.

Rupert Ponsonby, co-founder of the Beer Academy, comments: "Beer needs to be more aspirational. It pairs brilliantly with a wide variety of cuisine, but many restaurants and food lovers are still unaware of its potential. Pairing beer with sushi is our latest gastronomic challenge and the consensus from our guests was quite surprising, favouring beers with low hop bitterness, but with greater-than-expected barley sweetness."

Guests were asked to choose their winning combinations from 11 matches. The favourite proved to be Zatec Pils from the Czech Republic, served with minted cucumber maki rolls. The full, sweet Bohemian barley malts are balanced by the cool, refreshing taste of the mint. "Mint is great - Zatec carries it well," said one taster.

My own personal favourite was Sol from Mexico, which Steve and Ricki matched with warm grilled eel nigiri - and yes, I know that warm fish isn't necessarily 'pure' sushi, but that's the way the rice cake crumbles. The sharpness of the beer cut through the slightly salty yet sweet flavour of the eel.

The combinations

• Fruh Kolsch (Cologne, France), with Sweet Prawn Nigiri: A pale, delicate, spritzy beer matched with a sushi that uses prawns that are kept in their cooking brine, which is naturally slightly sweet.
• Sol (Mexico) with warm grilled eel Nigiri: A clear, smooth, refreshing beer, with delicate, nutty flavours. The eel is marinated in citrus oil, and then lightly grilled and sliced on to rice.
• Grolsch Premium Weizen (Holland) with Natto: A soft, creamy, slightly sweet beer, partnered with fermented soya bean and spring onion sushi.
• Schneider Weiss (Germany) with sea bass and ginger and soy sauce: A rich and full-bodied wheat beer, matched with a basic sushi nigiri, but using sea bass, which has a stronger taste of its own.
• Zatec Pils (Czech Republic) with minted cucumber maki rolls: A Czech Pilsner with a full, complex palate, reminiscent of bitter honey, matched with thinly cut pieces of cucumber marinated in mint sauce before being wrapped in the Sushi rice of a maki roll.
• Dos Equis (Mexico) with salted salmon skin maki roll: A Vienna style lager, matched with sushi made by lightly salting and toasting the salmon skin before wrapping it in sushi rice with spring onions.
• Palm Speciale (Belgium) with foto maki roll: Belgian ale with sweet notes, partnered with foto maki (a big roll) filled with egg, kampyo (sweet gourd), tembo (sweet cod powder), shitake mushroom, spinach.
• Duvel (Belgium) with tempura prawn maki roll:A classic Belgian golden ale matched with tempura prawn maki roll - a crisp fried prawn surrounded with soft rice and the hit of wasabi mayonnaise combines well.
• Worthington's White Shield IPA (Burton-upon-Trent) with ikura sushi (salmon roe): A bottle conditioned IPA, an exhilarating match for the saltiness of the salmon eggs placed on top of this Sushi lozenge wrapped in seaweed.
• Bacchus Kriek (Belgium) with California roll: A highly traditional Belgian sour beer, flavoured with cherries, partnered with a reversed maki roll, where the toasted seaweed sheet ends up inside
• Kasteel Cru (Alsace) with chicken teriyaki sichimi roll: Fermented with champagne yeast, this beer has a slight dryness on the finish and a citrus zing and partners perfectly with the chicken teriyaki sichimi roll which has the sweetness of teriyaki and the heat of sichimi pepper to complement the rice.