Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Monday is My Sunday

Okay, yes, I'll admit it. When I heard that River Oaks was offering their wine list at 50% off on Monday I got excited. They have a pretty good wine list so I took this opportunity to try out some outstanding wines for a reasonable prices. I say REASONABLE because most restaurant wine list markup in this genre of restaurant are just offensive. Restaurants that don't markup in an unreasonable way: Napa Cafe, Majestic Grille, Restaurant Iris, Cafe 1912, Tsunami, thank you for that guys! But, I also know that restaurants do pay a ridiculous liquor/wine tax (24.25%) to the state. So anyway, yesterday we went out to River Oaks for a little vino & a snack. We started with a Rochioli Pinot Noir 2005 Russian River Valley. It had a beautiful translucent ruby color with aromas of black cherry, tea & hints of earth. The palate was delicate, medium bodied with ripe red cherry & bright acid. Our next bottle was the Carpineto 2001 Brunello di Montalcino. This is why I love Italian wines with a little age. The wine poured dark purple with a black core, aromas of barnyard, funk, forest floor, mushroom & black fruits. The palate was rich, dense, velvety & gave a long, long finish.

Two things are inexcusable when it comes to wine service at this level, or rather the level that River Oaks is portraying themselves to be at. One is improper temperature of the bottles. Both reds were served way too warm & required chillers, which I asked for. If they are going to serve warm red wine they should purchase more chillers or ask the table if they would like their red wine chilled down for them. I shouldn't have to ask, they should know better. Second, is a dirty wine glass. All three of our glasses that we were given with the first bottle were dirty. Not just "the dishwasher left some residue" dirty, I mean, greasy thumbprints & lipstick dirty. Again, a restaurant that wants us to see them of a certain caliber shouldn't allow this to happen. Eww.

5 comments:

winelover said...

I have had the same unfortunate experience at River Oaks. The place is not clean and the food is merely average or less. I do love the wine lists at the other places you listed.

Nancy Deprez said...

Agree with your assessments! Hopefully next time you go those two things won't happen. Especially warm wine! Brings into the question of storage.

Nice that they have 50% off though. What did you eat?

The Chubby Vegetarian said...

thursday is my tuesday, and monday is my saturday. I don't know where i'm going or when i'm supposed to be there.

Michael Hughes said...

Justin- As long as there is a bottle of wine involved, who cares what day it is, right?

Yeah, hopefully that won't happen again, Nancy. We will see. We just snacked on some sliders (which were really just meatballs on a slice of baguette! so technically not sliders) & some tarragon pomme frites which were delicious.

Michael Hughes said...

Winelover-

Thanks for reading & posting!

Michael