Beer's Newest/Oldest Pairing: Pretzels

Tom Bergin's Tavern is doing a fresh spin on a longtime twosome.

If you follow the theater of eating out at all -- and by that we mean the more entertaining and outlandish aspects of the restaurant scene -- you can almost get a little inured to the fresh twists on beverage-food pairings creative-minded cooks try.

Cotton candy and Chablis? That might be the only tasting combo we haven't seen listed on a menu yet, but, to be honest, someone out there might be doing it (best wishes, if so). So when a restaurant that's been around awhile builds a special event around a longtime, oh-so-classic food-and-drink pairing -- say, beer and pretzels -- you almost want to pause and ask "okay, what's the attention-garnering gimmick, then?"

There's no gimmick at Tom Bergin's Tavern, but there hasn't been for the better part of eight decades. The old-school Fairfax pub serves up a lot of pints and lot of soft pretzels, as old-school pubs often do. With that in mind, Tom Bergin's will be pairing three seven-ounce ponies of some nice brew with an over-sized pretzel on every Tuesday in April.

Cost is nine bucks.

Oh, and in case you're wondering? This is in honor of Soft Pretzel Month. Which should be every month, but we won't put any undo pressure on the Soft Pretzel Council. Well, not too much, at least.

The weekly rotation will keep things a-flowin', but the beers on tap starting the week of April 8 are Harp, O'Hara, and Guinness. The pretzel stays classic, week to week. No fancy truffle salts or melted gouda or what have you. Just dough, salt, and mustard.

What other edible, drinkable pairs are ripe for a renaissance? Peanut butter and jelly? Donuts and coffee? Surely we've swung back around to wanting the tried-and-true twosomes we know we can count on.

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