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Dining & Spirits
Odd Couples: Matching Food, Wine
 Tasting Room Wine and Tapas in St. Augustine |
Matching food and wine is an old game with new riddles such as coffee-crusted filet mignon or Southern fried pickles. Fear not. A new crop of modern wine bars and grape-clever restaurateurs is pouring fresh answers across the state.
New-fangled tastes like espresso steak get a juicy Rhone at Crü Lush Wines & Pure Food in Fort Myers. A nouvelle napoleon of seafood stacked on red and gold beets is an easy one for Christine’s Restaurant Wine Bar and Fine Spirits in Fort Lauderdale: A dry rose from the Loire.
Fried pickles? Well, they probably are better with beer than wine, but most tables order them with whatever they drink at Murdock’s Bistro and Char Bar in Cocoa. With old-fashioned fried chicken, owner Stevie Whittaker has the wit to steer you red. “That white wine with white meat is old.’’ She likes a north country cabernet franc or a cab-syrah from California’s Paso Robles.
In between New Wave and Old South, what about mac and cheese and cheese dolled up with truffles? “Oh, you can go so many ways,’’ says Jeffrey Hileman at Clusters & Hops in Tallahassee, where diners and shoppers have a choice of 2,000 labels to buy at retail prices and drink at the table for only a $7.50 corkage fee. “I’d go with a pinot noir because of those mushrooms — or Champagne; it would really cut the creaminess.’’
Indeed, the game is way out of date. Drink what you like or try something different, whatever. Today’s pairings are simple, imaginative food meets imaginative wine at a dozen new restaurants and wine bars that put wine at the forefront of the menu in formats sleek and rustic.
From upstairs-downstairs Cork and the Bottleshop in Sarasota and Crystal River Wine and Cheese Company to Too Bizaare Bar and Restaurant in Jupiter, smart chefs and wine lovers drag wine out of fusty lists and dusty cellars.
Better menus are contemporary and ingredient-driven, often ethnic, always casual and usually small plates. At Tasting Room Wine and Tapas in St. Augustine, the crew from Opus 39 serves tapas and larger “tablas’’ platters of Serrano ham and olives for a table to share.
The accompanying wine is equally innovative, sold by glass, carafe or bottle and selected for adventurous flavor more than fame. The buyers seek wines more distinctive than merlot and pinot grigio. So you’ll find more zinfandels and roses, pinot blanc and ports and affordable discoveries from Austria, Greece and Spain. In the best, you’ll find more choices under “Interesting Reds” than under cabernet sauvignon.
Pairing small-bite food with unstuffy drinking can make dining less formal and less expensive, a sophisticated bargain suited to modern socializing. Some push by-the-glass prices to scary double-digit heights or stay with the restaurant industry markup of three times retail, but smarter restaurants use low prices to make wine an easier part of casual meals. And sell more wine.
“Our markup is just 100% across the board,’’ says Lev Zaitsev, wine steward at Christine’s, which opened six months ago. “We want people to come in and be able to have a good bottle of wine.’’
At Murdock’s, Whittaker keeps wine by the glass at sensible levels, too. “We don’t have any over $9 a glass. That’s high end for me.’’
 At Harmoni Market & Bistro in Orlando, most wines sell for $20. |
The best deals and selections are in a new hybrid, wine shops or markets where you can sit and eat. They sell wine to take home or to drink on premises, with corkage fees as high as $25. At Harmoni Market & Bistro, which opened in Orlando’s College Park in 2006 and has three more locations in the oven, most wines sell for $20, and you can have them at your table for $15 more. At Moonstruck Wine Company in Melbourne, the corkage fee is only $8.
At West Palm Wines in Tampa, there’s no charge on any bottle over $20; prowl the old warehouse, buy a bottle and retreat to the store’s hideaway cafe, Beaunes.
At Clusters & Hops in Tallahassee, the corkage fee is only $7.50 for any bottle, whether $6 or $60. “We want you to be able to come in, grab an awesome bottle of wine and not have to spend that awful traditional markup,’’ says Hileman.
That way customers enjoy more wine — and more mac and cheese.
