Gourmet Food and Beer Pairings at For What It’s Worth
By Becky Billingsley
It's a good sign you're going to like a restaurant when one of your favorite chefs at another restaurant calls in a carry-out order while you're there, and it happens all the time at For What It's Worth, an "Old School Pub" at the north end of Myrtle Beach.
This pub specializes in small-batch gourmet beers, and Executive Chef Shea Dannemiller often schedules modestly priced (usually $25-$40 per person) multi-course beer dinners with thoughtfully planned beer and food pairings. The beer dinners take place on a rooftop patio.
Downstairs in the pub, the light is dim and the ambiance darkly woody with a dash of tasteful beery kitsch. Seating is at a bar, cocktail tables and booths.
Chef Dannemiller's regular menu is full of upscale yet approachable finger foods that offer carefully crafted flavors and presentations. Customers might wonder how a small seaside pub got a chef who can create house-smoked chicken and Andouille sausage eggrolls with Cheddar and onion, and sweet chili hoisin sauce; or Tequila Barbecue Chicken Pizza with smoked gouda, red onion and cilantro. His experience includes a bachelor's in culinary arts from Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island; almost eight years as sous-chef and then executive chef with the Houston's restaurants in the Hillstone Restaurant Group; six years with The Cheesecake Factory as a new unit launcher; and finally 2 1/2 years as corporate chef with the Mickey & Mooch steak houses in the Charlotte, N.C., area.
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Then he got sick, with multiple sclerosis, and he had to scale back. However, the corporate culinary world's loss is the beer and pub lover's gain.
Chef Dannemiller is a certified beer server through the Cicerone program, and plans to soon take the test to become one of about 200 certified cicerones. In the meantime, he invites beer lovers to come in and experience the wide variety of brews the pub has on hand, and enjoy a few of the dishes he has created to accompany them.
Tapas include Sesame Tuna Sashimi, a basket of soft pretzels served with honey butter, Feta Cheese Dip, and Mini Crab Cakes made with lump meat and served with Cajun butter sauce.
Sandwiches are hearty, like The Club with turkey, ham, bacon, sharp Cheddar and Swiss cheeses, leaf lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise on toasted sourdough or multi-grain wheat; a Tri-Tip Steak Sandwich made with house-smoked sirloin that's smothered in onions and mushrooms; or a popular Chicken Parmesan Sandwich served on toasted Parmesan bialy.
Perhaps the most glorious sandwich is The Quite Sloppy Joe, which is a hearty and savory (not a sweet Manwich) meal containing Angus chuck, onion, poblano pepper and tomato.
Even the salads have finesse and beery heartiness, such as Club Salad with a buffet of toppings, Chicken Caesar Salad, and a gorgeous and vertically dramatic Tequila Barbecue Salad with fresh roasted shoe peg corn, black beans, avocado, tomato, Cheddar and hand-battered onion rings topped with chicken bathed in tequila-tomato barbecue sauce.
That barbecue chicken can also come on a pizza, and two other pizza choices are Meat Here with ground beef, bacon, pepperoni, sausage and tri-tip; or Spinach and Artichoke with garlic, fontina and mozzarella.
Five entrees range from California Tacos filled with crispy shrimp or blackened white fish; to The Stuffed Chicken containing fresh sauteed spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, caramelized onion and smoked gouda that's served with garlic Parmesan cream sauce.
Some people come just for dessert cocktails and one of Chef Dannemiller's freshly cooked Beignets (think funnel cake for grown-ups) dusted with powdered sugar and drizzled with Grand Marnier orange reduction. Another great dessert choice is the baked-to-order Now That's A Cookie, which the chef describes as, "The very best cookie you will ever have, made with vanilla pudding and chocolate chips, made to share."
For What It's Worth is at 7710 N. Kings Highway in Myrtle Beach, and the number is (843) 497-7171. It's open daily for lunch, dinner and late night; the kitchen stays open until midnight.
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