“Ask Beau” – “You recently posted on Instagram that sake goes with pizza, really?”
Well thank you for very much for following me at (truesake) on Instagram Janice R from Marin. And the simple answer is absolutely! Back in the day when I first started playing with sake and western fare I would find a conflict with the acidity of tomatoes and tomato sauce. It knocked several of my “confident food friendly” sakes off of their stools! In fact in my book published by Chronicle Books I said pairing with tomatoes was very difficult! But over time and by gaining experience and broader pairing spectrum I realized that this was not the case at all and that there were a wide array of sakes that do go with the higher acidity of foods like tomatoes!
So yes! There are a plethora of sakes that go with pizza! But like all things pizza has evolved so much in the past decade! The picture shows a piece of crappy delivery pizza that is basically a party filler pie! And I would recommend drier brews with higher acidity levels to go with these pizzas. Pies that are very cheese forward call for sakes that have a lot of creaminess and a good velvety texture found in a kimoto or yamahai brew.
The point is if you like sake then keep testing sake! Keep taking sake to western restaurants. Keep taking sake to the table at home when you make your California kitchen favorites. And of course have a bottle of sake ready when you order your pizza during the ball game!