Wannabe Wino

As previously mentioned, we joined Leah of DC Gastronome (too cute with her food journal open the whole time!) at David Greggory for the Happy hour meeting of the DC/NOVA Meetup Wine Club. All in all, a good time was had. A good number of people showed up (I would say around 20 over the course of the evening!) and it was great to meet new people, which I find is hard to do when you move to a new place and 95% of the people at your new job are at significantly different life stages than you are.

Overall, the restaurant was crowded! It was hard to get enough seats for everyone at the bar, and the bar is a good size. The servers were also a little frantic, they seemed to only have one bartender for their biggest happy hour of the week.....

The wine specials for the evening, at $4.75 a glass were a Spanish Grenache, a Cava and a Chardonnay. I don't think anyone had the Chardonnay. I had the Grenache and the Cava. Nice selections, I was particulary impressed with the Cava, it had great bubbles, a scent of yeast, and was crisp and light with apple and pear flavors. The Grenache was a little less exciting, though definitely drinkable. It had little on the nose, but the mouth was nice and fruity and it went down easily.

Several options existed for appetizer specials and the group seemed to try all of them over the course of the evening. I didn't have any (not my best call ever), since Matt wanted the deviled eggs (NMS), but he said they were delicious. He got 3 deviled eggs filled with different centers for $5.00. Not so bad. I also saw they had some mini-pizzas and wings. Everything looked good, and came out of the kitchen quickly.

We stayed for dinner and a bottle of wine after the happy hour slowed down a bit. I'll review that later!

Plus great company, what more could you ask for? Some tasty bubbly perhaps?

We went out last night to the Melting Pot for dinner with our friends Danielle and Tom. Always excellent to see them, especially over a fun meal. Restaurant week is now over until August, but we took advantage of it again last night.

For dinner we had a melted cheese fondue of swiss cheeses served with various bread, veggies and green apples for dinner. The second course was meat fondue in a vegetable broth, served with terrikayi steak, chicken, shrimp, gorganzola and shrimp ravioli and assorted vegetables. Finally, we had a dark chocolate fondue with marshmellow cream and Oreo crumbles. Yum. Excellent food!!

The meal was pretty much fixed, we could change the cheese and chocolate, but that was about it. So I figured with the mix of food and flavors I would pick a sparkling wine. I haven't had a Cava in a while, so that's what I went with. A Segura Viudas Aria Estate Brut. The restaurant price was $28, 11.5% alcohol by volume and a traditional champagne closure. I see that it's available around $10 online, so not a terrible markup for a restaurant.

In the mouth, there were apples, pears and spices, with a hint of either a nectarine or a peach. There were nice little bubbles in the mouth and a good finish. I liked it, and would get it again if I could find it again for $10!