The new recipe, recently introduced to the menu, already accounts for 25% of fish and chips orders. The beer is selling well, too.
Legal Sea Foods has long offered gluten-free menu options, including fried seafood. And the Boston-based casual-dining chain also has a Traditional New England Style Fish & Chips on the menu. But CEO Matt King thought it wasn’t the best version of that classic.
“I personally love fish and chips but we were doing a classic New England fry, where we dip the fish in buttermilk, and then in a dry dredge,” he said. “You didn’t get that crunch and crispness you would get in a European pub or chip shop.”
Those British versions are usually coated with a beer batter, but to make them gluten-free, it’s necessary to use a gluten-free beer. “I was always on the hunt for a beer that was guaranteed to be 100% gluten-free, but they all had a disclaimer on the bottle that said ‘produced in a facility that may contain gluten.’ That wasn’t good enough for my customers,” said King.
His hunt has ended. He recently discovered Meli, a 100% quinoa-based beer that operates in the Boston area, convenient to Legal Sea Foods’ headquarters. Meli’s founder, Samara Oster, worked with MIT food scientists to develop the beer, and now King is partnering with her to source it.
“This is a big deal locally,” he said, adding that it took a bit of trial and error to perfect the beer batter recipe. The culinary team went through several iterations to get the proportion of beer-to-dredge right and to determine if any other liquid was needed. “We also had to figure out how long the batter would hold before it lost some of the effervescence from the beer,” said King. “The kitchen now makes multiple batches during the day because the batter doesn’t hold up forever.”
The result is a fluffier, airy batter that fries up into a crunchy, crisp coating. Gluten-free beer-battered Fish & Chips rolled out at Legal Sea Foods nationwide on March 18, except at airport locations. Guests can also order the Traditional New England Style; both are priced around $30 on the all-day menu. Right now, only fish filets are prepared with the gluten-free beer batter, but there’s interest for shrimp and scallops done in that style, said King.
“We’ve sold nearly 17,000 orders of fish and chips from March 18 through the beginning of May, and 25% of them are the new gluten-free beer-battered version,” he said. “It’s gaining a lot of traction.”
Based on its performance, the new Fish & Chips style have earned a spot on the permanent menu. While gluten-free is the chain’s major food-sensitivity focus, “we have a pretty extensive allergen program and our menu has plenty of choices for guests that have allergies or intolerances,” King said.
Meli beer has also been added as a choice at the bar. It’s in the style of a blonde ale and has a nice, crisp taste with a really clean finish, he added. Aside from being gluten-free, the beer is also sugar-free and fairly low in alcohol at 4.4% ABV. “Meli is now making up about 3% of bottled and canned beer sales,” King reported.
