Thankfully, The Porterhouse has come to the rescue. Not content with saving us from macrobrewed beer in the last decade, it's now tackling the Great Tapas Swindle. In 2006 it opened The Port House in a dark South William Street basement. There are pintxos at the bar and a full tapas menu in the main restaurant, with dishes in the €3-€5 range: hardly Spanish prices, but very good for Dublin. The quality of the food is excellent (particularly the churros with hot chocolate), and there's an extensive list of wines, sherries and ports. A second branch, called Pintxo, set up on Eustace Street in Temple Bar last year.Even before these places opened, The Porterhouse was importing Pagoa beers from the Basque country for sale in its bars. Naturally, these constitute the beer list in the new tapas joints, though I think they have Birra Moretti for the lager-heads too. It was in Pintxo that I sampled the Pagoa Zunbeltz stout I reviewed for November's Session, and I was back to try another a few days ago. This time I went for the red ale, Gorri.
On first tasting I was disappointed: it's a very dry affair with quite a pronounced dusty musty flavour. Musing on this, I munched on some chorizo al vino, and took another sip. The difference was incredible. When put next to the rich meat-and-wine flavours, the beer becomes much smoother and rounder. The sweet malt flavours that one expects from a red ale come right to the front, while the dryness remains at the end, maintaining the balance and making the whole experience very pleasant indeed.
I can see why the management moved this one from their pubs to their tapas bars. I'm very sceptical about the whole beer-and-food pairings thing that our American cousins enthuse over, but this beer simply doesn't work without the accompaniment of bold Hispanic flavours. I'm prepared to allow that, just this once.
