Northampton Wines and Spirits- Wine Cafe

JoeFish — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 16:30:22 -0400

In a previous post, I mentioned Northampton Wines and Spirits, a fantastic little wine store here in Greenville, SC. I took the opportunity to eat there between shows on Saturday, and I have to say, although I fell asleep on the floor of the booth in the throes of epic food-coma, it was well worth it.

First of all, it’s a beautiful building, brick (like most buildings in Greenville), old brick, with a brick overhang and brick chalmers and gaslight-period lamps on the outside. The cafe area is glassed in under the overhang (it may have been the stable at one time) and brick steps lead you up to the vestibule. The store has a bar along one side that has several wines by the glass, and will open anything in the store for VERY reasonable corkage: $5 for 1/2 bottles, $10 for full-size. There is an adjacent restaurant, but that doesn’t open until 5:30PM (too late for me to make it back to the theater- besides, who wants to eat sit-down alone?), but they serve the full menu at the bar starting around 4:30. They have cheeses and charcuterie during store hours (9-9).

I made a beeline for the half bottle of Martinelli Seven Mules pinot noir, 2003. I hadn’t forgotten it from Thursday.

Another boon at the bar: before 6:30 you can order any entree on the menu in a half-portion for half-price (except the salmon). I started with “Pan Roasted Alaskan Halibut With Andouille Sausage & Bacon Cheese Grits, Asparagus & Sundried Tomato-Lump Crab Beurre Blanc.” Yeah, it’s a, er, mouthful, but oh so good. Smoked pork is, despite what you might think, a classic foil for fish (as is sauerkraut) and the gentle but present kick of the andouille perked up the bland but rich grits. The halibut was a moist, flaky punk-rocker, with its crispy orange-tinged mohawk of skin; the fish was perfect: perfectly cooked, perfectly fresh, perfectly good to eat. I was concerned, at first, that the sauce would be too rich for what was going on, but the tomato lightened the butter and the crab made it savory. It could have been three meals.

Next, I took a chance on wild boar tenderloin, which came roasted medium rare and thinly sliced: unsurprisingly, it was very well executed. The chance I took was on the corn relish it sat on. I am often skeptical of anything that looks like or quacks like what came to be known, in the nineties, as Southwestern cuisine. This was a carefully but poignantly spiced jumble of corn, enlivened with lime juice and balanced by honey. Subtle, flavorful and quite crunchy, it stood up to both the flavor and meatiness of the boar and its deep brown sauce espagnole, a meat stock reduction flavored with onions and thickened. It is among the great sauces of haute cuisine, but rarely seen on a menu, presumably because it is merely good, and not flashy enough for what this country has come to expect from its restaurants. The fact that the sauce is hot, brown and extraordinary isn’t enough for some. It was enough for me. There was also some lackluster sauteed spinach heaped beneath one side of the corn. Alone in its category for the whole meal, it was undercooked and forgettable.

The last savory thing in my flight of half-portions was a cold-smoked pork chop, boneless from the loin, which, although juicy, was slightly overcooked. Not as overcooked, certainly, as 95% of the pork served in restaurants in this country, but it was cooked just to the point of being grainy. This didn’t stop me, however, from nearly swallowing it whole. The smoke flavor was that tiffany lamp or silver frame that you don’t stare at, but makes the room what it is. The chop came lounged on sweet roasted carrots and parsnips (unfortunately, probably my annual parsnips; I never seem to eat enough of them) by the pool of brown sauce of Madeira and molasses. The sauce was good, but I may have expected too much from it. Here, two days later, it’s the only thing I can’t come up with a taste memory for. Would this prevent me from ordering it again? No.

What about the elusive Martinelli? The mythic Helen Turley love child of the best vineyards of Sonoma? Well, to be honest, I think it was damaged. It had a hint of that crumpled-cardboard taste that often accompanies heat damage. Not enough to refuse the bottle, certainly, but enough that I don’t think it’s fair to review it, either. It certainly did the job with the fish and the boar, and although not out of place with the pork, it struggled with the smoke, where a syrah or zin would have run with it.

I befriended a lovely woman while at the bar whom the chef came out to visit with. He was an intense, but smiling guy who was happy that we were happy, but completely unable to take a compliment. He came back out with chocolate mousse for us, which I wouldn’t normally order, being unimpressed with the caring/calorie ratio of most, but this was everything chocolate mousse was made to be.

It was somewhere between a Westin hotel pillow and a cloud, with a profound flavor of chocolate, deep like the Mississippi, like the Grand Canyon, like the lines in Donald Sutherland’s face. It’s made with Callebaut cocoa powder, he told us, and when I get back to my kitchen it will become my mission to recreate.

The Martinelli soared with the chocolate mousse.

Now I’m in Toledo, looking for their answer to Northampton wines.

The Omnivorous Fish - resaurants

Northampton Wines and Spirits- Wine Cafe