Mission Gastroclub: Underground Eatery Fuses Home-Cooked and Homebrewed

Brian Yaeger

At an undisclosed residence in the Mission: Pork chops and black-eyed peas, paired with homebrewed smoked porter.

​What to do when there's a dearth of brewpubs in San Francisco yet underground restaurants are raging? The answer, as demonstrated by a D.C. transplant and homebrewer named Eric and an ex-Ad Hoc cook named Neil Davidson, is to create the Mission Gastroclub. We first learned about this source of homespun delectableness months ago from FemALEist. The reason it took us so long to attend one of the dinners? Within minutes of the events being e-mailed and tweeted, they booked up beyond the 14 available spots, and well onto the wait list.

But once you're accepted, a humdinger of a beer pairing dinner awaits.

Brian Yaeger

Ham-studded hushpuppies over slaw.

​Set in the residential Mission, each dinner is themed (past ones have included "spice," "Japan," and "tomatoes"). Last night's was "Dirty South." The first of four courses consisted of ham and jalapeño hushpuppies on a bed of coleslaw, paired with Moonlight Brewing's Death and Taxes, a roasty Schwarzbier. The texture of the hushpuppies ― amorphously molded, bursting with porcine goodness, and so fresh the rest of the pig was vacuum-packed and chilling in the freezer next to the dining table ― shamed what passes for hushpuppies at most West Coast restaurants that dabble in Southern cuisine.

Brian Yaeger

Trashed: Aftermath of an underground pop-up.

​The second course consisted of a cold-smoked slider on a fried (not baked) bun with aїoli and homemade (it doesn't need to be called house-made if it's made at home) dill pickles paired with home-brewed "Regular Beer," a golden ale, deceptively light and made for easy drinking. After the meal, Eric showed interested guests what exactly cold-smoking is and how raw beef that spends a mere half hour in it before grilling is infused with enough smoke to scare the dickens out of a park ranger.

The pork chop pairing with smoked porter and apple pie pairing with barleywine worked splendidly, but we'd rather spend our last paragraph highlighting the conviviality of the meal. Everyone at the table was jovial and engaging (not that that can be guaranteed for every Gastroclub event). Even those with significant others went stag, thereby liberating the directions of the nonstop conversation, which, ultimately, is the perfect pairing for a beer dinner. As for the cost, you can't pay with a credit card yet you needn't bring a fat stack ― this social club accepts donations typically in the $25-$30 range, a bargain if ever there was one.