Edible Manhattan

Lest you leave thinking Good Beer didn’t also mean good food, every vendor who came to feed us did it right. Like our beer options, the foods on offer spanned continents. Spicy and salty flavors seemed to be the unofficial theme of the night, as evidenced by my personal favorite bites of the night from Little Tong, whose salted cucumbers with bang bang sauce, chili and fried garlic were so perfectly integrated that I went back for more three times, and Blue Smoke, whose pimento cheese-sausage-jalapeño crackers were a master class in hors d’oeuvres preparation. My patience in waiting until the end of the night to taste the sweet treats paid off when JoMart Chocolates’ beer truffles and beer and pretzel caramels melted in my mouth as I departed, sufficiently buzzed and appetized, into the gorgeous night.

Edible Brooklyn

In other words, we ate well. We drank well, too: The second course, Kimchi Shakshuk, was paired with Green Juice, allowing Ben to really spotlight his approach to the meal’s cocktail program—“I thought about the pairings as if I would include the ingredients [of the drink] with the dish itself.” He combined the juniper-forward Sipsmith with the sweet and vegetal flavors of the Chartreuse, and added the cucumber and herbs to amplify the kimchi and shrimp in the dish.

Edible Manhattan

Both the walking tour and the dinner, like the other tours, encourage thoughtful dialogue and give you a chance to consider your own food memory, how food helps shape our senses of identity and the geographic realities that make some foods endemic to certain places (not to mention what it means for those foods to travel away from their “homelands”). Both experiences also challenge you to think about what our varying interpretations of “American food” say about American culture, and the role food plays in our economy and politics.

Edible Brooklyn

Unsurprisingly, Kiara has big dreams for her future. After high school, she wants to attend Johnson & Wells University, where she’ll continue to grow her culinary talents then work as a chef in the Air Force. Ultimately, she hopes to own her own bed and breakfast, which will have a garden onsite and will of course source ingredients from nearby farms.