Well the night I got in, I wanted something to snack on and a beer, so I went down to the bar in the lobby and looked over their menu. I wasn't in the mood for a full meal, so I ordered their H Fries from the appetizer section to try.
Now you might wonder what's so special about an order of fries, well the fries weren't the special part, it was the dipping sauces that intrigued me. The fries were seasoned lightly, just enough to add some flavor but not so much that you lost the taste of the fries themselves.
Now the sauces (oh man, the sauces) were really something else. The fries came in a metal cone with paper (see the blurry picture below, not used to using my phone for pictures) and 3 dipping sauces; a garlic aioli, a truffle mayo, and a chipotle ketchup.
The garlic aioli was amazing; it was slightly off-white but creamy with no chunks of garlic. The garlic flavor itself was strong, but well-balanced with the rest of the ingredients when eaten with fries. As I am a lover of garlic, I used up more of this sauce than I probably should have but it was so very good.
The truffle mayo was something I have not seen before, even though I have worked with truffles on the rare occasion. They used white truffles for this and minced them nice and small so they mixed in with the mayo well and dispersed flavor throughout. Another very well put-together dipping sauce that didn't overpower the flavor of the fries but complemented them and added another nice flavor dimension. I would be interested in seeing what it would be like with real black truffles instead of white, but that would move this dish from $6 to more like $60 or so as black truffles are very expensive.
The last sauce I tried was a little disappointing, the chipotle ketchup. The reason I was disappointed was because, even though the ketchup had some smokiness and hints of heat to it, the ketchup was overpowering the chipotle aspects of this sauce. Now, if you haven't worked with ketchup before, it can be a little tricky to make flavored ketchup because of the sweetness of ketchup. That was the case in this circumstance. The sweetness and over ketchup flavor overpowered the chipotle ingredients that they added. I did get the smokiness and heat, but only after several bites of it. This might have worked better had the fries not been seasoned, but the sauce still could have been unbalanced in regards to the flavor profile.
The beer I had was the Blanco Diablo from Big Boss Brewing in Raleigh, NC and was definitely something different. The Blanco Diablo is a wheat beer that rings in at only 4.3% alcohol so you can sit there and drink them back to back rather easily on a hot summer day. Now, what makes this beer unique are the ingredients that they brew this beer with; cucumber and lime. You read that right, this is a cucumber and lime wheat beer! This is probably one of the more refreshing beers I've had in a while in fact!
You can taste the cool and clean taste of cucumber and the refreshing crispness of the lime zests used during the brewing process. Even with that said, this was well balanced and worked well with the fries, but this would also go well with some nice grilled chicken or shrimp. I could also see this going along well with some Thai food or some Cali-Mex tacos.
I might have to drive up to NC next time so that I can visit Big Boss Brewing and try some more of their beers as they have quite a selection of regular beers and some seasonal ones as well. One of their specialty beers I want to try is their Big Operator, which is a raspberry and cocoa nibs beer.
