by Harley Zipori: September is the month my company likes to plan events for customers and employees. These usually involve copious quantities of good food and no small amount of wine and other beverages. We always have guest from Europe and it is always fun talking with them about food and drink and gauging their reactions to what I consider the high quality of the local food and wine.
Yesterday, we went to a restaurant in Tel Aviv for company lunch with 11 of us (we are a small branch here in Israel of a larger company). This isn’t a food blog and I am not a real restaurant buff. However what was particularly notable was that they actually had a local craft beer on the menu. The restaurant is The Officers Club on Ha’arbaah Street and they had two types of beer from the Malka brewery (http://www.malkabeer.co.il, Hebrew only). Its summer and I like to start a meal with a golden ale so I ordered the Malka “Bright”, a golden colored “saision” ale, based on the seasonal beer brewed in the French speaking area of Belgium. It is has low alcohol and is very refreshing with lovely hints of fruit and citrus. What was really a pleasant surprise was that other people in my group ordered the beer so including one of our guests from Germany who ordered two. All told I counted at least 7 bottles of Malka beer ordered by our party.
Now this is a step in the right direction. There is no reason that there couldn’t have been a half a dozen Israelis beers on the menu. Actually there was barely this number of beers at all as this is an Asiatic restaurant and most of the other beers were from Japan, Thailand and China. But it’s a start.
We are going on a company get-away this weekend and I will have an opportunity to see a few other restaurants and see if any of them are serving craft beers. It’s also my chance to ask for Israeli boutique beer and at least hint that there is some demand for some blue and white craft beer.
If any of you out there would like to report on your Israeli Boutique Beer findings, please mail me at maof.beer@gmail.com and I will be sure to include your input in my blog.
