​Corporate kitchens are continuing to add wine and spirits to their dishes, apparently angling for sophistication and increased perceived value.

Olive Garden is now pushing a pasta dish with shellfish "sautéed in white wine" and a stew "simmered in light white wine." Red Lobster's developed a new chardonnay-grilled shrimp, T.G.I.Friday's is glazing ribs with Captain Morgan and Applebee's is saucing its latest sirloin with a California Cabernet.

As Nation's Restaurant News pointed out in a 2008 story documenting the incipient trend, chain restaurants and alcohol have a longstanding relationship. When Howard Johnson, a regular customer at Le Pavillon, cajoled acclaimed French chef Pierre Franey into developing a menu for his restaurant chain, Franey boldly introduced beef burgundy. Road trippers - who roundly rejected Franey's curry -- liked it.

"It is stewed in California wine," Gael Greene reported in a 1970 review for Life. Franey told her: "We always used California wines for the bourguignonne at Le Pavillon."

California wines remain the standard at chain restaurants, which promiscuously affix the word "Napa" to chickens and steaks. The California wine industry, which hasn't been immune to recessionary pressures, has no doubt encouraged the association.

But corporate chefs wouldn't reach for the wine bottle if they weren't sure their customers would be receptive to spiked food. Yearly wine consumption nationwide has soared in the past decade from 568 million gallons to more than 767 million gallons. Restaurants likely hope their boozed-up dishes will inspire customers to consume still more, perhaps by ordering a glass of wine to pair with wine-soaked pasta.

​You've heard of Two Buck Chuck? How about three-buck Wink?

The $2.99 Winking Owl Merlot is found exclusively at Aldi, the deep discount grocery store. Bottled by Gallo, it's a thoroughly respectable little bottle of grape with hints of cherry and other sweet fruits. I dare you to put it on the table with your oenophile friends for a blind taste test against wines three and four times the price. If they don't pick the Winking Owl, they don't give a what-owls-say about a nice, smooth Merlot.

And don't raise your eyebrow at "Merlot." It may have lost its cachet as wine-of-the-moment, but it's bound to make a comeback. Like fern bars. And porn mustaches.

The other Winking Owls on Aldi's shelves, also $2.99, are surprisingly flavorful, too. The Cabernet Sauvignon is smooth, dry but sweet and good with food or for cooking (I'm using it this week to enrich beef stew). I'm not a fan of Chardonnay in general, but this one's medium sweet and not tongue-fuzzingly dry. And it didn't give me a headache. Best of all of them is the Pinot Grigio, which is light, not syrupy-sweet and goes down miles better than its fellow cheapy, Barefoot. (That one's so bad I poured it down the sink.) The Shiraz is light and dry, good with meat dishes or pastas. Like the Merlot, it tastes of black cherry, maybe some blackberry and spices like cinnamon or nutmeg.

Good, cheap wine -- whoot!

Patrick Michels

​Each week, Pairing Off attempts to find just the right bottle of wine to go with ordinary food.

Huevos rancheros is a simple and traditional ranch breakfast of eggs, salsa and tortillas--though sometimes people would add beans.

This "sometimes" is the problem. Order the dish at one place and it comes with chorizo. Another drops the eggs over potatoes. Go to New Mexico and the flavors change. The last place I tried it, they placed two strips of American-style bacon over diced potatoes and onions, with eggs to finish the plate and tortillas on the side.

But that's the way it goes with almost any recipe. Families, communities and cultures all adapt foods to suit their tastes.

When it comes to pairing wine with huevos rancheros, there's another problem: Unless you hit, say, Fearing's for brunch, few restaurants serving the dish (especially in its most basic form) are likely to stock a decent selection.

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Patrick Michels

​Each week, Pairing Off attempts to find just the right bottle of wine to go with ordinary food.

This Creole staple is cooked slowly over low heat so vegetables, spices and beans melt into a richly flavored stew. Some people add andouille or ham before pouring it over plates of white rice.

On the other hand, some of us--me in this case--grab a box of Zatarain's and mix with water. Pretty easy, though not quite the same.

Still, we've long argued that most people are introduced to the world's varied cuisines through containers marked Zatarain's, Chef Boyardee, La Choy or whatever. Far too many choose not to progress beyond the box. Others (myself included) occasionally succumb to the convenience of processed foods.

Well, I succumb fairly frequently--but that's another matter. On those occasions when faced with a plate of gritty brown bouillon and rice, can wine salvage the meal?More >>

Patrick Michels/Flickr user Photos8.com

Oh, no--the artist is entering a new and darker phase.

​Each week, Pairing Off attempts to find just the right bottle of wine to go with ordinary food.

National restaurant chains know how to stretch the limits of almost any word. Olive Garden tries to sell us on the "Tuscan" influences in their dishes--you know, the grilled shrimp caprese, five cheese ziti and such. Applebee's introduced an "Asian" crunch salad to go along with their "Oriental" chicken salad.

Recently Wendy's began advertising their "spicy" chicken nuggets--five wads of breaded white meat for 99 cents that, as their commercial segments admit, aren't too spicy.

They've seasoned the crust with a non-threatening black pepper and cayenne mix, judging by the flavor (and ruddy color). But what the hell. You're up for a bottle of wine, you don't really want much to eat and there's a Wendy's around the corner.

So which wine goes with bland white meat, breading and dusty cayenne?

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Patrick Michels

​Thanks to a deadline timing fluke largely of my making, this was my birthday dinner: half a bag of supermarket French fries.

You know--those freezer burnt sticks one pops in the oven, checks after the recommended 15 minutes to find a batch of glossy, flaccid, half-baked things. So you leave them in for another 15, with similar results. Finally your only recourse is to twist the knob all the way to broil and wait for smoke to envelope the room.

I was, to some extent, heeding the advice of Goody Goody Addison's wine guy, who urged me to overcook the fries. Doing so, he implied, would make them more pairing-friendly by scorching in some character. Todd Lincicome, esteemed wine director at Al Biernat's, essentially said the same thing when he told me "fries are one of those foods that take on the flavor of a dip or seasoning."

In other words, the pairing is one of wine to salt or ketchup rather than wine to processed, oven baked potato sticks.

So which wine is best?

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Patrick Michels

​There were some punishing stretches over the three months past, where latkes from a box or a Snickers bar purchased from some convenience store were standout dishes.

Plenty of suffering to go around: popcorn shrimp, candy corn, cranberry sauce from a can...

At least I was favored by some decent wines and workable pairings, thanks to some expert guidance from folks at Vino 100, Goody Goody,.Centennial, Pogo's, PK's, Veritas--the list could go on.

In the meantime, demented artist Patrick Michels went through two distinct phases. One showed a reliance on simple, commercially appealing, logo driven MADI-style derivatives. The second proved darker, invoking images of fear, danger and even dismemberment.

It is these we feature this time around.

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Patrick Michels

​Each week, Pairing Off attempts to find just the right bottle of wine to go with ordinary food.

Yes, it's the season when newspapers, magazines and blogs come up with as many ways as possible to mention eggnog, wassail and fruitcake.

Can't be helped, really. This is the only time of year when people buy fruitcake, for the most part. Instead of taking my advice from the previous post and ordering from Collin Street, I headed over to a Target Supercenter, figuring I'd find tins stacked near every checkout aisle.

My reasoning was solid. Though the Corsicana bakery sells millions of fruitcakes and a few hardy home cooks prepare them from scratch, most people grab the grocery store variety--and these flippant cakes with the sickly green jellied things poking out at odd angles are what come to mind when someone mentions fruitcake.

So what pairs up with one of these monstrosities?
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Patrick Michels

I say Latke, our artist says Latka

​Each week, Pairing Off attempts to find just the right bottle of wine to go with ordinary food.

OK, much of what I know about Hanukkah and its traditions comes from Adam Sandler. But I'm also a big fan of the potato pancakes served in some Jewish homes this time of year.

There are couple ways to prepare potato pancakes. Some people first create mashed potatoes, making for a light, fluffy texture inside. My ex, who was a native of Lithuania, preferred the other method. This involved hours of grating potatoes into a fine, wet dough--which she then used to like a bunker buster bomb.

Of course, there is a third option.

For this week's pairing, I picked up a 'just add egg and water' box from Walmart, one that came with a "kosher for Hanukkah" assurance. Now, as for the wine...

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Patrick Michels

​It's hard to square the popularity of beef jerky with our love of low-sodium foods and really thick steaks. But there it is, an ancient staple available in every gas station, convenience store and grocery in the U.S.

Who can resist the stuff, really? The flavors are dense and often quite spicy. It comes in resealable containers to preserve the freshness (which seems kind of strange). I've been known to down entire bags at my desk. Even our dainty little receptionist claims to love beef jerky.

Despite the appeal, it's really a utilitarian thing--not one generally suited for a sit down dinner with a decent bottle of wine.

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