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Famous pizza, beer pairing takes new twist
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
For Chicago-area real estate agent Tom Seefurth, it came down to a matter of location, location, location.
Pizza may go with beer. It may go alongside beer. But should pizza go in beer?
Extras
Seefurth, 43, says the question occurred to him when he noticed a pile of tomatoes on his counter last Labor Day weekend. Upon seeing a pile of tomatoes, most of us probably would think of such things as salads, BLTs or spaghetti sauce. But Seefurth is a dedicated member of the resurgent home-brew fraternity. His garage has been converted into a mini-brewery and he is a judge at home-brew competitions. Besides, he has tried lots of other combinations, including salsa beer, curry beer and oatmeal raisin cookie beer.
So when he saw the tomatoes he didn't think of salads, BLT's, spaghetti sauce or, even, taking them to Wrigley Field and hurling them at the woeful Cubs. He thought pizza. Then he thought beer. And then the two thoughts blended into one really disgusting sounding question:
If people who like the taste of beer also like the taste of pizza, he wondered, why wouldn't they like beer that tastes like pizza? And, while several hundred million beer drinkers undoubtedly would answer, "what are you, nuts?" he hopped to it and combined the two in a single glass.
He did not, it should be noted, actually put a slice of pizza into a glass of beer. That would have been gross, although it probably has been done before at various taverns by customers who definitely should have gone home a few hours earlier.
And, even if he had, that probably would not have been as unappetizing as what happened to my wife and me when a waitress put our leftovers — kung pao chicken, moo shu pork, fried rice and sweet and sour cabbage — into a single container for us to take home.
"All goes in the same stomach," she insisted.
What Seefurth did was take some of the same of the ingredients that give pizza its flavor — oregano, garlic, basil and tomatoes — and mix them with his beer.
In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, he admitted that he thought the result might taste "like Bloody Mary mix with beer." But the combination, he decided was not too bad. Or not bad enough, at least, to keep it to himself. So he approached the brewmaster of Walter Payton's Roundhouse, in Aurora, Ill., about serving his concoction, which he had named Mamma Mia Pizza Beer.
Walter Payton's Roundhouse did not need the publicity that serving pizza beer obviously would bring it. It had been co-founded by the former Chicago Bears running back, which made it well-known to football fans. And it is the old existing limestone roundhouse in the nation, which makes it a hot spot for old building fans. But the brewmaster helped Seefurth make up 10 barrels of the beer, using two kegs of canned tomatoes and 450 cloves of garlic.
For the past few weeks, Mamma Mia Pizza Beer had generated modest sales, but plenty of attention. And, to tap the market of those pizza lovers who do not drink alcoholic beverages, someone undoubtedly is hard at work for its obvious counterpart:
Pizza cola.
Contact this writer at (937) 225-2439 or at dlstewart@DaytonDaily News.com.
