Thursday, June 26, 2008

Gracie's wine flights

Well it's been a few weeks since I last posted about the wine flights at Gracie's. Even though Brendan, Gracie's present wine guru and bar manager will be moving on to California next week, the wine flights will continue under the watchful eye of Anter, the new bar manager.

Anyway, the new list of the tastings is out -- just click here for the latest schedule.

So Susie's brother Dick -- bachelor for a week while his wife is visiting family in Washington State -- drove down to our place Wednesday late afternoon and the three of us drove to Gracie's for wine flights. Dick had never been to the wine flights before and since he is rather passionate about wine we thought it was high time he experience the Wednesday night event firsthand.

The wines presented last evening were three "summer wines for the porch," all white wines as you might assume: A soave classico from northern Italy, a vouvray from the Loire and a rose from the Languedoc. These were nicely matched with a chef's tasting of three shrimp dishes: poached shrimp, light tempura shrimp and roasted shrimp. The vouvray, for me the most forward of the three wines, smoothed out quite nicely with the tempura shrimp I thought.

Once again the back end of the house at Gracie's did a bang-up job on presenting what are really just three very small dishes -- but the with the kind of attention to detail, meticulous preparation and attractive presentation that has become a hallmark of one of Providence's signature restaurants.

Yes, yes, it's absolutely true that my wife is the pastry chef at Gracie's. But that one fact does not in any way invalidate my conclusions.

If you don't believe me, go and see for yourself. At 10 bucks that's a steal, for an opportunity to sit at a comfortable bar, chatting about wine and food with people of like mind, is not a bad deal at all.

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