Dining with the Iron Chef

Happy Hour at Roast, where I disovered the joy of the fried egg burger.

The Iron Chef is on his way.  From a @chefsymon tweet this morning:

heading to the D for jolly pumpkin beer dinner tonight...cant wait..their beer is insanely good..my absolute favorite

He's referring to the Jolly Pumpkin/Stone Brewing/Nøgne Ø beer dinner being put on at his restaurant, Michael Symon's Roast, in downtown Detroit's restored Book-Cadillac Hotel. And your correspondent is fortunate enough to be attending.

The dinner will showcase all three versions of the collaborative Special Holiday Ale brewed by Jolly Pumpkin's Ron Jeffries, Stone Brewing's Mitch Steele, and Nøgne Ø's Kjetil Jikiun. Each version was brewed with the same ingredients, including white sage from Southern California, chestnuts from Michigan, juniper berries from Norway, and caraway seeds, with the first version produced at Nøgne Ø, the second at Stone, and the third – to be released as Collababeire at the Jolly Pumpkin Café in Ann Arbor 4pm this Thursday – at Jolly Pumpkin's Dexter facility. Here the three talk about the first collaboration in a video with terrible sound:



Other beers from each of the breweries will also be featured; no word yet on the food pairings. For more background on the Special Holiday Ale, see here, here, and here.

Should be a great time; I'll try to take copious notes to share later. And maybe they'll even let me have another fried egg burger. Mmmm, fried egg burger.