From lager to scotch, rum and cognac, chefs are matching dishes to more than just wine these days.

The next time you’re out for dinner and feel like a little adventure, ask your waiter if the chef or bartender can suggest something other than wine that will enhance the flavours of your meal — it might just be a trend you can really sink your teeth into.

Tastings, as you may know, aren’t just for wine anymore. In fact, chefs, bartenders and liquor brands are teaming up all over the place, designing menus meant to be enjoyed with beverages such as beer or scotch or even cocktails. Sometimes the liquor-based menus suggest tasting a flight of different single malts over the course of dinner while other menus mix up different cocktails for each course.

Top chef Lynn Crawford, formerly of Toronto’s Four Seasons’ hotel and culinary juggernaut on Food Network’s Restaurant Makeover, designed a cognac-tasting menu last fall for a group of mid-level Canadian celebs, including an ex-Leaf player and former MuchMusic host Erica Ehm, as well as non-celebs like us!

The four-course meal featured delectable items like Brandied Lobster in Orange Salad with Butternut Squash Bisque, served with Courvoisier VS — an amazing match. The rich lobster meat and subtle orange salad brought out the flavour of the cognac and vice versa, proving to the room that spirits can have the same effect wine does when paired correctly with food. They play off each other, enhancing flavours and giving credence to the old adage that the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.

At Vancouver’s Blue Water Café you can enjoy one of two tasting events at any time. Sit with sushi chef Yoshi Tabo as he demonstrates the fine art of making sushi — then sample his culinary artistry of sashimi, nigiri and sushi before partaking in a matching flight of chilled sake.

If cocktails are more your speed, you can find a perch at Blue Water’s bar and have mixologist superstar Brad Stanton guide you through an informal cocktail-making seminar. He’ll introduce some of his “food-friendly cocktails” and discuss the importance of using only the best ingredients (fresh-squeezed citrus juices, sourcing the best berries and freshest herbs, etc.). He also highlights premium brands and new organic products while guests sample his amazing cocktails paired with fresh oysters and other seafood samplers.

Try the Blue Water Daiquiri, a blend of Havana 7-year rum, fresh lime, fresh mint and strawberry syrup, paired with Royal Miyagi oysters from B.C.’s Cortes Island. Their smooth texture, mild flavour and kiwi-like aftertaste are an ideal match with the fresh, sweet daiquiri.

Toronto’s Beerbistro stocks more than 100 different lagers, ales, lambics and the like, categorized under names such as “quenching,” “crisp,” “bold” and “spicy” and uses many of them in the dishes on the menu — but it doesn’t stop there. Guests can select to taste a flight of beers from the ever-changing options on tap or choose a pairing suggestion from the menu, say, the Red Thai mussels in a coconut, lemon grass and coriander broth paired with a “bold” Anchor Liberty Ale.

Or, on your next weekend getaway to New York, make reservations at Park East Grill in Manhattan. It often hosts single malt suppers where patrons can try different scotches paired with three courses, such as the mint molten chocolate cake with fresh strawberry purée matched with Dalmore 21-year-old, a seductive whisky that features nutty, chocolate and smoky flavours.

So, the next time you’re out for dinner, forgo a standard glass of wine and dip into something you’ve never tried before. Who knows, cognac could replace your favourite merlot.

First published at CanadianLiving.com