HICKORY – When it comes to fall and holiday food, American Honor Ale House and Brewery manager Taylor Boyd admits she looks forward to stuffing and anything sweet.
“I’m a fanatic for treats. If there is going to be pumpkin pie, squash casserole, sweet potatoes with brown sugar, marshmallows, I’m there,” Boyd said.
The American Honor Ale House Executive Chef Nick McIlrath admits he didn’t grow up with a creative menu at home or traditional holiday meals.
“I was raised out of a tin can. I didn’t come from a cooking family. This is something I taught myself,” McIlrath said. “The holidays meant someone else was cooking for us and that was great.”
The biggest holiday memory he has, as far as food goes, are the fried onions on top of a green bean casserole.
“I’ll eat a can of them by themselves,” he said.
Regardless of their tastes, capturing the memory of a fall meal with family and friends, those comfort food memories from our childhood, is the focus of many restaurant staffs this time of the year.
Sweet and spicy
As both a restaurant and brewery, American Honor Ale House – part of the Blowing Rock Brewing Company – has the opportunity to see the changing seasons influence both the food and beer it serves.
American Honor Ale House’s fall menu highlights include a chocolate porter funnel cake made with the brewery’s Big Chocolate Porter and drizzled with sorghum.
“We feature a lunch special every day that caters to the season, and we always keep seasonal veggies in rotation,” Boyd said. “We’ll do maybe a turkey sandwich with a cranberry aioli and served with pumpkin ale.”
McIlrath said when he thinks of fall food, his focus is less on holiday specific dishes and more on foods with a warmer feel you could eat every day.
“We added andouille sausage on the menu just because it’s got a light spice, just enough so if it’s cold outside it’s going to take that away,” McIlrath said.
He likes the ability of incorporating some of the seasonal beers from the brewery into his recipes as well.
With the chocolate porter funnel cake, McIlrath said customers will get more of a yeast flavor with the use of the brewery’s Big Chocolate Porter, and the chocolate comes in very low undertones.
“It also helps in the same way you would use, like in a tempura batter, carbonated soda instead of water to add more puffiness to it so it allows it to expand and be a little more airy,” McIlrath said. “I’ve replaced all the water in the funnel cake recipe with beer.”
Personally, he enjoys many of the traditional fall flavors everyone is familiar with, including apple cider which inspired another adjustment to the menu.
“I actually changed our chicken brine recipe and we’re now using cider to brine our chicken so if you were to smell the brine by itself you would say it smells exactly like fall,” McIlrath said. “It gives the chicken just a little bit of sweetness, and it really breaks down the chicken to make it tender.”
One of his favorites on the fall menu is the Monte Cristo sandwich made with ham, turkey, two types of mustard, pimento cheese and mayonnaise.
“Then we dip it in another batter heavy in all spice and we cook it French toast style on the grill and then top it with more powder sugar and sorghum,” McIlrath said. “It’s very much a combination of sweet and savory.”
Staying seasonal
Boyd said the fall and holiday months are when certain seasonal beers are in demand like its roasted pumpkin ale, grandfather breakfast stout and black IPA beers.
“There is just always something coming every other week during this time until the holiday season ends,” Boyd said. “We have a beer that we feature year-round, our Belgian Strong Ale. People say it tastes like Christmas in a cup. It has allspice and figs, a higher gravity beer.”
The Roasted Pumpkin Ale recently was released and is a popular seasonal brew with a strong local connection, Ray Hodge the brewmaster for both the Blowing Rock and American Honor Ale House, said.
“It’s made with North Carolina pie pumpkins that we source locally and then we roast them ourselves in a very special way to caramelize those sugars as much as we can and really get more pumpkin flavor in the beer,” Hodge said. “You got to figure out when a pumpkin beer arrives on the market in July or August; it’s not made out of fresh pumpkins.”
The Grandfather’s Breakfast Stout is equally unique and pulls on fall flavors, brewed with oats, coffee, cocoa and maple syrup.
Hodge enjoys seeing the different beers he and his staff create get used on the restaurant side of the company to make unique dishes.
When it came to the holidays as a kid, Hodge especially looked forward to Thanksgiving. “It was a big food holiday for me,” he said. “It’s the time of the year when the leaves are changing and the weather is getting cooler and everybody wants more comfort food, richer food, bigger flavors and that crosses over into beer as well, so it’s a special time of the year for me in both the complexity of the food and the beer.”
His favorite holiday and fall foods include baked sweet potatoes and pecan and pumpkin pies.
American Honor Ale House is open Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Tuesday through Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.
It’s located in Hollar Mill, 883 Highland Ave. SE, in Hickory. For more information, visit americanhonoralehouse.com or call 828-855-9999.
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