Clay’s Kitchen & Elusive Brewing Food and Beer Pairing

Depending on how long you’ve been reading Kavey Eats (and especially if you follow me on social media too) you will already know how huge a fan I am of Clay’s Kitchen & Bar run by Nandana Syamala and husband Sharat. Last weekend we enjoyed a double whammy, visiting the restaurant on Saturday evening for a feast from their regular menu, and heading back the next day for a Sunday lunch food and beer pairing event.

We first fell in love with the Clay’s At Home offering, through which they deliver many of their signature dishes nationwide. You don’t want to know how much we’ve ordered from this service since then–sufficient to say it’s been a huge amount, and we enjoy a Clay’s dinner from the freezer on a regular basis. This was during the first Covid lockdown so it was several months before they were able to reopen their central Reading restaurant, Clay’s Hyderabadi Kitchen. Like many, we were happy to support their crowd-funding campaign ahead of moving to their newer, bigger premises in Caversham, now called Clay’s Kitchen & Bar, which opened last year.

For the event, Nandana created a tasting menu designed to work with a range of beers brewed by Elusive Brewing. Food and beer writer and expert Melissa Cole talked us through each dish and how and why the chosen beer paired with it, and Elusive’s owner Andy Parker said a few words about each beer and how it came to be created.

The first course was Green pea sarvapindi, a traditional crispy rice flour pancake with peanuts, green peas and spices. This crunchy snack was paired with Elusive Brewing’s Connections Lager (4.5%). Pete deemed this a classic lager but with more flavour and floral hops than the industrial brands, Melissa described this as an obvious pairing though it was no less successful for being so.

Next up was Burnt aubergine in pachi pulusu, a raw tamarind-based soup with jaggery, onions and sesame seeds, tempered with mustard seeds and curry seeds. This light broth packed a mighty punch of flavour which was paired with Elusive’s Fall Ruby Rye Mild (3.8%). This beer is an excellent mild made with traditional British hops. Pete enjoyed the lovely rye character and hedgerow fruits aroma, comparing the beer to an English Cwtch (Tiny Rebel), and agreed that it was the perfect foil to such a spicy soup.

Probably my favourite dish of the night was the Uttapam with coastal-style pork mince in which a mountain of spicy pork mince was piled onto a thick, yielding pancake (made from a fermented rice and lentil batter). The edges were pleasingly crunchy; I’ve never had uttapam like this and I loved it! Paired with Elusive’s Metropole Citra Pale (4.5%) which is a fairly traditional citra ale, all about the hops. Pete said that whilst this isn’t a particularly exciting beer, it’s a pleasant drink and balances out the rich, chilli-heavy pork beautifully.

Given how generous the uttapam and pork mince dish had been, the huge serving of Tomato rasam rice with ghee roast crab was more than any of us could finish, though the leftovers were much appreciated for lunch the next day. A lightly spiced tomato rice was served either with ghee roast crab, or with an okra stir fry for those opting for the vegetarian version. This dish was paired with Labyrinth Black Pale (4%). Ignoring the oxymoron of a black pale ale (that argument has been hashed out many times already), this tastes like a simple pale ale with the barest edge of dark malt. This was probably Pete’s least favourite pairing, as it didn’t seem to add much to the experience of the dish.

Last but not least on the savoury front was the Clay’s take on a surf and turf in the form of Grilled wild boar and prawn kebabs. As you can see, a disc of boar mince kebab surrounds a hot and fiery prawn centre, served in an equally fiery red curry sauce. The veggie alternative of spinach and paneer balls was served in the same sauce. The pairing here was Elusive’s Oregon Trail West Coast IPA (5.8%). A deep bitter with lots of hop aroma – likened by Melissa to a London bus stop (thanks to the pervasive aroma of industrial quantities of marijuana) – Pete found this super dry with a huge hop flavour typical of a very powerful US-style IPA, he felt it could be be too much on it’s own but matched very well with the intense flavours in the fiery red sauce served with both kebabs and veggie balls.

I’m not sure how anyone found space for two scoops of Home made pistachio ice cream but we did. This rich and creamy dessert was paired with Barrel Aged Mince Pie Barley Wine (8.5%). With a really strong flavour from the barrel aging, Pete felt he tasted more of the bourbon than the barley wine in this beer, though found it enjoyable. The dairy in the ice cream balanced nicely to pulled the wood-barrel tones back into balance.

Excellent food as always from Nandana and Sharat’s kitchen, a set of dishes quite different from their usual menu and unfamiliar and exciting for the diners, wonderful compering from Melissa Cole supported by Andy Parker, the maker of the paired beers, and exceptionally helpful and friendly service from Nandana’s well-trained and professional front of house team made this a really enjoyable event.

If you’re lucky enough to live within easy reach of Clay’s, I urge you to visit, not only for special events such as these, but also for the normal offering which is something very special indeed. To close, a few images of our meal (from the regular menu) the evening before.