title_body: What food pairs well with an IPA?
upvoted_answer: As a complete novice to food pairings with beer, I've been looking at this nifty pairing chart on http://www.craftbeer.com [PDF] whenever pairing questions have come up on Beer.SE. According to it, the suggested pairing for an IPA is
  
  
    Strong, spicy food (classic with curry!); bold, sweet desserts like carrot cake
  
  
  and for a Double/Imperial IPA is
  
  
    Smoked beef brisket, grilled lamb; Southern chicken-fried steak.
  
  
  I found a great little summary by Michael Agnew (2012) that explains some of the rationale behind these pairings (emphasis mine hereon):
  
  
    When pairing IPA with food you have three basic flavor hooks at your disposal; bitterness, hop flavor (spicy, grassy, herbal, earthy, and citrus), and caramel. Hop flavors have a great affinity for spices and light fruits. Bitterness has a cooling affect. Paired with spicy dishes, IPA will fan the flames at first, but douse them in the end. Bitterness also amplifies salty and umami flavors. The caramel flavors in the beer will latch onto the sweeter side of a dish, tying into things like caramelized onion or the crispy skins of roast poultry. And the hop acids and carbonation make IPAs great palate cleansers to take on even the fattiest deep-fried delights.
  
  
  Samuel Adams has a "Pair with Sam" tool, and looking at its suggested pairings for their Whitewater IPA (hoppier than their Latitude 48 IPA), pork appears to be the meat of choice: pulled pork, barbeque ribs, chorizo, roasted pork tenderloin, and sweet sausage; and the rest of its suggestions align with the salty-and-spicy pattern we've  seen.
  
  We seem to have found strong consensus already, but just one more to make sure. In Blue Point Brewing Company's words, its IPA pairings are meant to complement
  
  
    intensely flavorful, highly spiced dishes, such as curry, and bold, sweet desserts like flourless chocolate cake and crème brulée
  
  
  or
  
  
    rich, aromatic, spicy and smoked foods such as chili, BBQ ribs, grilled chicken, and beef.
  
  
  Actually, I think they stole those words from Wegmans' Guide to Beer and Food Pairing.