Much in the same way that fine restaurants have paired flavorful culinary choices with wines, Emerald Coast Coffee & Grille has created a world-traveler's inspired menu that expertly pairs with the robust notes of premium international coffees and teas.
First, we designed a theoretical tool gleaned from the wine and beer literature that matched coffee attributes with food that we wanted to sell in our own restaurants. Then we systematically evaluated and adjusted that tool to ensure that we were getting the desired level of flavor enhancement from the combinations.
The art and science of pairing foods with beverages, whether that be the most well developed pairings for wines, or the more obscure practice of formally matching food with coffee and tea, draws liberally from cultural practices around the world. Centuries of gastronomic development have fine tuned the connections between beverages and food. For example, it is well known that India has specialized in the cultivation and use of exotic spices in their food. It is fair to assume that time would also deliver the most compelling connections between the spicy foods and the beverages they use to support those flavor sensations. So, when it comes to making recommendations for pairings of foods that have some concentrated spicy flavors, it is natural to draw on the “wisdom of the ages” to identify the beverage flavor characteristics that best match and accentuate the food flavor sensations.
So, you might say that pairing is the practice of deciding what beverage flavors and sensations unlock the hidden flavor magic of a given food. The reverse is also true, in that a well paired food and beverage will certainly bring to light flavor nuances in the beverage that were previously unnoticeable.
We will be developing and suggesting “Feature Pairings” of our drinks and food, and we will be suggesting these as if we had some kind of magical knowledge that gave us keen insight into how each individual perceives flavors. That is obviously not true, so we would rather suggest that you use our suggestions as a platform for experimentation and discovery. Only you can decide what food makes your favorite single origin coffee cultivar shine like it has never before."
