The only time beer gets close to food is with potato chips or salted peanuts at the bar, or at a barbie - mainly to pour some on the meat as it cooks.
Or, if you want to be classy, use it in batter for fish and chips (just like marinading red meat in wine).
We do not have beer waiters in restaurants, and the beer is usually tucked away at the end of the wine list. We don't have beer and cheese evenings, do we? A Champagne breakfast is an indulgence; but a beer breakfast!
Even water is more acceptable at the dinner table than beer.
Flat beer is a no-no but still wine is normal; beer, with its effervescence, has never reached the fizzy heights of acceptance of Champagne.
Beer is the working man's tipple: he goes to the pub, not a high-class restaurant. Wine is for the white collar worker who can afford fine dining. Or, as the words of the old English song go, ''Let gentlemen fine sit down to their wine. But we'll all of us here stick to our beer.''
It is akin to rugby for the intelligentsia and rugby league for the others. After all, who ever heard of Rhodes Scholars, doctors and lawyers playing international rugby league?
But back to the food and beer evening hosted by Emerson's Brewery founder Richard Emerson at Millbrook.
Millbrook's head chef, Andi Bozhiqi, a wine drinker, admitted it was difficult for him to match the dishes with beer, so he relied on his beer-drinking master chef assistant.
Emerson, who also likes a wine or a whisky, is ardent about having beer with food: ''Beer, with its diversity of flavours, goes beautifully with food,'' he told the diners.
About half of them agreed with the Emerson's beers matched to three of the five courses - the lower strength Bookbinder malty brew with pork belly; the malty bitter Bird Dog IPA with beef fillet and London Porter with chocolate, blackcurrant mousse and orange dessert.
Beer and chocolate work: no one complained about the chocolate at the end filled with Emerson's malty Taeiri George and London Porter.
The Seriously Good Chocolate Company in Invercargill makes chocolate with beer fillings for more than a dozen breweries (the wine equivalent is cabernet sauvignon with chocolate cake with raspberry jam in the middle. A mouth-watering thought!)
The general rule for wine is white with white meat and red with red meat. The same applies to beer: the likes of lager with white meat; dark malty with red.
''Beef steaks and porter are good belly mortar'', according to an 18th-century Scottish proverb.
Emerson recommends stout or porter with beef and stews; hoppy beer such as Pilsner with roast chicken; saison, wheat beer or white ales with cold meat and salad; saison, pilsner or pale ale with Asian dishes.
And his softer malt-flavoured Bookbinder with a hot curry (''the hotter the better'') because of its cooling effect.
His favourite match, however, is his Bird Dog IPA, with its hop bitterness, with Kapiti Tuteremoana aged cheddar on pear slices and a 12-year-old Glenfiddich whisky.
The Millbrook experience has not shifted me from wine with a meal.
Although, I must admit one of my most memorable meals, a long time ago, was prawns, crab and lobster in Singapore with the local Tiger lager and its spicy hop. Beautiful!
And, anyway, who am I to argue with the ancient Greek philosopher, Sophocles, who recommended ''bread, meat, vegetables and beer'' for a moderate diet.
