The issue was more subtle at DBGB Kitchen and Bar, Daniel Boulud’s new downtown restaurant, which offers 24 brews on tap. As you might expect, the oysters were pristine. The sausages  DBGB offers a selection of 13  were superb. Yet unless you could find the head sommelier, who was off one night when I stopped in, you might not be able to learn much about the beers. The Harviestoun Old Engine Oil, a British porter that I ordered, was malty, smoky and delicious. But the server was more comfortable discussing off-the-list wine specials than the beer.

“I’m learning,” he said. “It’s a fascinating process.”

Popular culture treats beer as the antithesis of stuffy pretension. Beer has spent so long as the everyman’s answer to snobby wine that investing it with serious appreciation and serious context is possibly too much to ask. Yet enough restaurants and taverns today, from high-end to humble, treat beer seriously, knowledgeably and unpretentiously that it is hard to accept any less.

Blind Tiger Ale House on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village is one of New York’s best beer bars. Partly this is because of the extent of the beer selection, which bartenders can discuss with precision. But it’s also because of the food. Dishes like chicken tacos, a Vietnamese-style sandwich of pork and mango slaw, or a bacon, apple and cheddar sandwich are creative extensions of pub grub, made with care and good ingredients.

In its original Hudson Street site, where it opened in 1996, Blind Tiger did not serve food. The kitchen was used as a coat room. Patrons used to clear out at 8 p.m. and return at 10:30, said Dave Brodrick, an owner. When it moved to Bleecker Street in 2006, the owners decided to add food. They hired a chef, James O’Brien, who had worked at Spotted Pig, with the idea of going beyond typical bar food. “Now we have a lunch crowd, which we never had at the old Tiger,” Mr. Brodrick said. “At dinner time there isn’t that falloff.”

Image Choices at Pony Bar in Clinton. Credit... Rahav Segev for The New York Times

Far from the world of the ordinary beer pub, Beer Table in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is a small jewel, more atelier than bar, dedicated to showing off some of the world’s best and most obscure beers. To go with the brews, Beer Table serves charcuterie, cheese and simple cooked dishes. One night, succotash with bacon was the unlikely accompaniment to an unlikely beer, Hardcore I.P.A., from a Scottish brewer who may have spent too much time in California. It was bitter, hoppy and delicious, and it went beautifully with the creamy succotash.

As rare as the beers at Beer Table may be, the server could answer my questions no matter how technical or geeky. But with beer prices that rival box seats at Yankee Stadium, the specialized appeal of a place like Beer Table may not extend beyond the truly committed beer lover.