Take off those Tiger beer goggles and reach for your curry-house wine menu.

Quirky food pairing evenings are often the last-chance saloon of food marketing. When naughty customers stubbornly refusing to drink/eat certain products in the way God (or the product’s CEO) intended, suddenly Old Speckled Hen Beer is super with turkey and Spaghetti Bolognese works better with beer.
But last Thursday, genial wine expert Tim Atkin achieved more stomach-settling results as he demonstrated that seared sesame-seeded scallops with coriander and tamarind might indeed work better with a grassy Grecian Santorini or gentle Austria Langenlois, than a bottle of Tiger.
Head Chef Anirudh Arora of Moti Mahal had employed Atkin’s services to remind us there’s more to ordering curry accoutrements than “three rice, two naan and four beers. She’s driving”.
And, over a glass of fine Italian Soave, it was genuinely pretty hard to argue the subtle flavours of Indian cooking (think simmered morels in a creamy yoghurt and cashew nut sauce, with apricots and almonds) could better brought out with Stella.

Yet, debate it I will have to, next time I go for a curry with friends. So it’s lucky I now have knowledge on the subject. Although it may be hard to remember how the dry, levelling effects of a red wine such as Morey St Dinis Domanie Dujac Fils et Pere 2007 really does impact on a trio of chicken tikka, with mint, chillies and dill – after a night on the beers.