I had wanted to try this establishment for about a year now and last night my wife and I decided to forgo our traditional Bellevue restaurants we frequent on Saturday nights and try this place out.
The wine bars we have frequented in the past have all been about providing the patron with a warm, inviting, environment with a knowledgeable, friendly staff to help you enjoy the good wines and food they have to offer.
Our first clue should have been when we walked in the door to the VERY loud music. If we could barely hear the hostess (also our server) asking us where we would like to sit, how were we ever going to carry on a conversation with each other while we sampled flights? Don't get me wrong, the music was good, just not the right venue to be playing it in. Right then we should have walked out but unfortunately we did not.
They had three televisions on showing football games (in a wine bar?) but in this case it happened to be a good thing because we couldn't carry on a conversation, so at least it gave us something to do while we sat there.
Regardless that our server could tell us nothing about the two separate flights we were interested in ordering, we ordered them anyway. Expecting but not receiving a staple to clean the palette in between flights, we asked for something in the way of crackers or bread and she brought us a cracker with rosemary in it, a flavor that interfered with the tasting of the wine but we let it pass.
All in all, the wines were very good, the restaurant had great ambience (setting aside the loud music), the food was average, our service was average (do they know to look for an empty water glass?).
We too had to correct the bill because one plate was at the happy hour price and the other was not -- it took forever to correct and they couldn't get the right price entered so they ended up charging us $2.00 less.
Overall, very disappointing. I hope they can make it.
I guess we'll stick with Purple.
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