Every celebrity chef opening a restaurant in Chicago brings a flurry of press around it, and the new Siena Tavern from Top Chef fan favorite Fabio Viviani is no different. (We desperately hope “monkey ass in an empty clam shell” is somewhere on the menu.) A handful of releases are going around today with info about the menu, the pasta made from scratch, the “mom’s lasagna” recipes, and so on. Eater Chicago, however, brings us a detail about what we’re truly interested in: the beer.
Before making plans to depart Goose Island, Jared Rouben put together a beer for them that sounds pretty interesting:
The house Siena draft, designed by former Goose Island brewmaster Jared Rouben, will be ready next month. It’s a wheat beer brewed with farro and the house pizza yeast.
Farro, for those wondering what it is, is an ancient grain that’s used primarily in Italy in soups and pastas. Using pizza yeast for fermentation sounds like an interesting choice, and we’ll leave it to the yeast-wizards among us to debate the benefits and downsides of such a choice. All it leaves us with is a vague hope that the beer doesn’t resemble the oft-publicized “pizza beer” that people seem to remember exists every 3 years or so.