“How’s the restaurant project coming along?”

Which is all very interesting, because if I told someone that I was opening up a winery, I doubt many people would respond with, “What kind of cuisine will you be serving?”

Perhaps that’s good, in a way. People strongly associate beer with food. Usually bar food. Fun times. Community. Small “d” democracy and political action.

When I first envisioned bringing a brewery and tavern to Durham, the concept was admittedly more high-brow: high-end food paired with great beer. There’s tons of opportunity out there for high-end beer and food. One of the best executions is right here in North Carolina. It’s a concept that’s still exciting to me, probably in large part because some of the most memorable meals I’ve ever had were beer dinners. (Charlotte’s Table: Braised Wild Boar with Gnocchi and Cocoa, paired with Natty Greene’s Old Town Brown; Chapel Hill’s Jujube: Coffee and Ice Cream Bombe with Duck-Rabbit Milk Stout)

But 32 and I did a little “listening tour” (remember that phrase?) of Durhamites and found that, while there was a decent amount of interest in the great-beer-meets-great-food concept, we were losing our brewery persona. We were turning into a restaurant that happened to brew beer, and it was going to be quite the battle to get people to think of us as a brewery that happened to have a restaurant.

Meanwhile, Durham was in a (continued) renaissance of higher-end restaurants. We decided we wanted to serve these restaurants rather than compete against them.

But what to do about food? We still wanted to have a unique food concept to complement our beers.

Enter the pie.

Yep, pie. It’s a little odd — pie and beer, no? Ha, just odd enough! I don’t recall how I got hooked on the pie concept (besides just fundamentally loving pie). It may have been the movie Waitress. Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s it. Sorry that I don’t have a better story for you about how we decided on pie. Like a lot of things, it was a result of staring at a screen. Not too romantic.

Anyway, before too long, I was finding all kinds of inspiration…mostly in the UK. Pieminister and Pure Pie in particular. Locally in Phoebe Lawless’ amazing offerings.

Alas, a concept was born: seasonal pies using fresh, local ingredients…paired with local, handcrafted beer. Not sweet pies, mind you (though we may offer a few of them). But hand pies in the style of English pasties. Decidedly not upscale. A simple concept that requires just enough explanation to interest people. Food you can hold in your hand while you drink a beer. And something certainly unique for the region. We’re on to something here, this whole “pie and beer” thing. So much so that I’ve reserved the URL pieandbeer.com.

photo courtesy of Ella Mullins on Flickr

How we end up preparing our pies will depend on the size of our kitchen, which all comes back to our location. I wish I could tell you more about the pie menu, our baker, and what pie pairs best with which Fullsteam beer. We’ll get there before too long. For now, I wanted to share with you a bit about our food plans, since  — at long last coming full circle in this long-arse post — we get this food question all the time.