The Art of the Pairing: Whiskey Meets Food at D’Agostino’s

Wine has held court at the dinner table long enough. Whiskey is making its move and a Vegas chef is making the case.

Wine people will tell you there are rules. Red with red meat. White with fish. Chablis with oysters. Bordeaux with steak. Spend enough time in a nice restaurant and you start to feel like the whole thing has been choreographed by a committee somewhere in France.

Whiskey doesn’t care about the committee.

For centuries, whiskey was the drink that showed up after dinner — a solitary pour in a leather chair, the domain of the postprandial sipper who had already eaten and moved on. It was seen as too high in alcohol, too assertive, too much of a personality to share the table with food. The culinary world treated it like the loud relative you seat away from the good china.

That’s changing, and it’s changing quickly.

Enter Chef Dan Thompson and GM Brandi Thompson from West Side Italian eatery D’Agostino’s. Chef Dan is not, primarily, an Italian chef. He is a classically-trained French chef who fell in love with his family’s Italian heritage and built a restaurant around it. And, for one evening in April, D’Agostino’s is stepping away from its Italian menu to host an ambitious whiskey pairing event. Five countries. Five serving stations. Five culinary creations. One kitchen.

The goal is simple: let’s see what happens when you let that broader training off the leash and throw a little whiskey on it. Thompson will be rolling out dishes to pair with various sips of Scotch, Irish, American, Canadian and Japanese whiskeys. Brandi’s front of house expertise will guide the guest experience.