Chicago Wine & Ribs + Pizza & Hot Dog Sides

Like all great cities, eating and drinking in Chicago is a dual proposition.  While the likes of Alinea, Moto, and Green Zebra ping away at culinary pleasure sensors, the city’s midwest soul food circuits beckon.  I developed my own ritual patterns for Chicago’s simpler local eating more than twenty years ago, always making sure to [...]

AN/2 & Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894 at Barcelona

The world is better off for places like Barcelona.  Wines such as Anima Negra AN/2 from Majorca’s red callet grape and Bodegas Palacios Cosme Palacio Blanco 1894 from Rioja’s white viura variety don’t make it onto just any wine list.  But at Barcelona Restaurant and Wine Bar, ten minutes off of I-84 in (of all places?) West Hartford’s [...]

Three-Step Classic Wine List Gameplan

Drawing up the perfect attack on a classic restaurant wine list creates the same adrenaline level NFL coaches experience prepping for Sunday games. At least it seems that way; it’s both exciting and nerve wracking knowing one or two calls can define a dinner’s outcome. Planning is required. Have we worked with the restaurant’s wine [...]

Pleiades XX, Thackrey, & Local Three: Authentic Collision

Some wine is described to be authentic. I have been meaning to build a working definition of authenticity for my own clarification and finally managed to squash a prolonged streak of procrastination after discovering ($25 ****) Sean Thackrey’s Pleiades XX on Atlanta’s Local Three Kitchen & Bar wine list. This adjective that has blossomed into standard wine enthusiast fodder, bandied throughout critical wine [...]

The Wine and Food Culture Divide

I’ll admit to spending more time than it’s probably worth thinking about nuances in wine and food culture.  For example, I ponder how obvious it is that most of us Americans act with righteous self confidence buying, ordering, and cooking the foodstuffs and ingredients we prefer. We’ll ask questions freely when shopping or ordering to [...]

Value Discovery: 2006 Hecht & Bannier Minervois at Flyte

It’s a rarity, but I found myself in Nashville, TN last week.  With business entertainment very much on the agenda, I searched for one solid restaurant with a decent wine list and found myself at Flyte World Dining and Wine drinking ($18 ***1/2) 2006 Hecht & Bannier Minervois.  This Languedoc-Roussillon stole my attention, and that’s saying a lot [...]

Kitchen A Trattoria BYOB and 2009 Domaine la Garrigue

Eventually you find Kitchen A Trattoria discretely tucked away off a main street in St. James, Long Island.  Worth the momentary measure of driving confusion, the restaurant delivers a top BYOB opportunity to pair Long Island’s most impeccably crafted, mouth watering, rustic Italian fare with your cellar’s treasures.  Hundreds of miles from my own wine cellar, [...]

Balaban’s Wine Shop and Restaurant: St. Louis’ Destination for Wine Lovers

I traveled to St. Louis steadily over the past five years and only discovered Balaban’s wine shop and restaurant on the evening celebrating the sale of our St. Louis business and the conclusion of my regular travel to the city.  Had I known about the wine lover’s destination sooner, it would have been a regular [...]

Saumur, Champagne, and a Little Giant

I have been eating and shopping for wine in New York City this past week and will share a connected vignette of a Saumur-Champigny shopping find, a transported Champagne note, and a wine friendly restaurant.  This week’s quick holiday in New York, where my wine and personal roots run deepest, produced unfavorably opposite impressions on my wallet [...]

Revisiting Cambridge’s T.W. Food

Walden Street floats in unremarkable limbo somewhere between Harvard’s and Fresh Pond’s respective square and roundabout.  I managed to discover the street in the autumn of 2007 checking out Tim Wiechmann’s newly opened T.W. Food, and immediately returned for a second confirming fix of Wiechmann’s brilliant and individually styled french country cuisine.  Because it was [...]

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