When is a cellar not a cellar ?
Restuarant Cibo North Adelaide is a great restaurant that reinvented cafe (ie not silver service) Italian in super competitive Adelaide. Great professionalism. No part-time waiters - career people. A fabulous in-house patisserrre, great gelato, and a serious pizza chef. The only mistake they made was to fit the restaurant out in a way that sound/talk bounced everywhere and destroyed their good intentions of buying decent sound system speakers.
Their only mistake until now that is. Cibo have recently installed a pretentious walk-in cellar of approx. 4 metres square. All for show. It holds a pathetic amount of wine under super cool conditions. The signal to customers is supposed to be that Cibo cares about wine, and that these bottles are special/precious. But anyone who gives a second of thought (or observation) will realise that these wines are very young, and most have come from the wholesaler within a few weeks/months.
Hey that's the same as 99% of restaurants - but it is sad that a really professional place like Cibo would pretend. The local Chinese takeaway has more authenticity and honesty when it comes to wine.
posted by Byron Sharp @ 8:24 PM
1 Comments:
Restaurants and wine lists:
Just be glad you don't live in the modwest or many other places in the US, soon to be the world's biggest wine drinking country (by volume). In some ways we are spolied here for a selection, sometimes small, but usually drinkable. I too drink beer when I find the wine list overpriced and familiar. I struggled in quite a few restaurants in Ohio trying to find something to have. We did go to one place on the way to the outdoor symphony, restuarant on a cross roads in the country (as it passes for country in Ohio) that had a real multi-continental selection, including a good range of Baroosa Shriaz and Grenache blends.
When one goes out for a special dinner, you do want something well cellared and different from your own cellar. I agree about the wine list at the Grange. We were there recently for a dinner given for my partner, when she left her last job. We had a Gewurtztraminer comparison from Australia (Adelaide Hills), Austria, and Alsace. Not many restaurants could do that!
Mainly, however, we choose to make good and usually simple food at home and drink a wide range of wines? The food is always hot (or cold), the beer is cheap and the wine list unique.
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