My friend bought some examples of beers and invited my wife and me to the restaurant last night to try out some combinations.
Here's the food: Nam Sod pork salad, Chicken Panang red curry with peanuts, Crab Rangoon, Chicken Pad Thai, Basal Pork, Se Ew beef. (sorry if I'm not spelling these right). All were spiced medium.
Here are the beers: Bitburger, Blue Moon, Blue Point Toasted Lager, Gordon Biersch Blonde Bock, St. Somewhere Saison Athene, Ommegang Hennepin, Saison Dupont, Victory Prima Pils, Florida Avenue IPA, Cigar City Jai Alai IPA.
We tried a lot of combinations, but quickly found that the Toasted Lager, Bitburger and Fl Ave. IPA didn't cut it. The food clearly overwhelmed them.
The Prima Pils went really well with Panang and the Se Ew.
The Hennepin was far better than the other two Saisons with this food at this time, especially good with the Nam Sod salad.
Blue Moon and Crab Rangoon is a nice combination and worked well with almost all of the other food.
The Blonde Bock worked only with the darker, beefier dishes.
Jai Alai IPA was also very nice with the "darker" dishes and stood up well to the curry.
So he's decided to have Blue Moon, Hennepin, Prima Pils, and Jai Alai on hand at the restaurant (in addition to the 6 Asian beers, the popular American Megas and Stella.
He had brought out a bottle of Miller Lite in a Vortex bottle, but it was getting late so we decided to save it for another time.