Cav Wine Bar--A Fresh New Experience

Girls' night out brought us to Cav wine bar tonight. I'll explain where we stumbled with this new restaurant and new (for us) dining concept, but overall it was an exceedingly fun, enjoyable, and unique night full of new things for us.

We started with a three-cheese platter and two tastes of wine each. A taste is 2 oz., and we decided we'd rather taste more wines that way than each settle on a glass and be stuck with it for the evening.

Wines: we each started with one white and one red. to be updated

Cheeses: our server helped us choose three cheeses. The haxaire was a cow's milk cheese spiked with ginger that went nicely with the white wine (French). The bocconcino was a goat's milk cheese (Italian), and the serra de estrela was a sheep's milk cheese (Portuguese). Since we both like soft cheeses, we didn't bother with anything hard. I think both of us liked the bocconcino best, especially after we figured out that it was supposed to be paired with red wine and not white. It was further proof that some foods just pair better with some wines.



The cheeses came with adorable accompaniments. Next to the bocconcino (my favorite) was a cube of quince jelly with a grape perched on top, dried chestnuts, and a spread of unfiltered honey. The haxaire came with sliced pears. The serra de estrella came with candied walnuts and an assortment of dried fruit: figs, apricots, dates, and Spanish almonds. All the fruit and nuts were wonderfully fresh and flavorful.

Cornmeal crusted French fried yams with Greek yogurt dipping sauce: Very interesting. Thick strips of yam were battered and deep fried. I really liked the cool refreshing sauce, but I thought the yams could have been more interesting. They were good, but nothing I couldn't whip up at home on a Friday evening. I really did want to try this, but wouldn't order it again. By this time we were halfway through our two tastes each, and ready to order more.

Wine: to be updated

Charcuterie sampler: they should really warn groups of two not to order this AND a three-cheese sampler. It was too much heavy food for one meal. Towards the end, I was really struggling to hold all the food down. Not to mention I was sorely disappointed that I wasn't going to be able to try anything from the entree section of the menu! As plates of smelt, crabcakes, venison, game hen, and pork floated by, all I could think was "My goodness, I calculated poorly." Still, the charcuterie sampler was very interesting.

The ciccioli was completely new to me. It seemed like shreds of pork solidified in a pork fat jelly. Extremely rich, and served with red wine sauce.

Chicken liver mousse with red wine gelee: the gelee is so perfect on this that this looked like a cup of blood when it came to the table. It wasn't until I poked it that I realized it was solid. It was strange and cold upon first taste, but it quickly grew on both of us. The photo with all three charcuterie shows the gelee after we already mangled it, but it's served as a perfectly smooth blackish red cover for the liver mousse.

The rabbit pate was an instant hit. You just can't go wrong with a meaty pate, a tiny pickle, a caper berry, and some good stone ground mustard. Next time, I'll select one charcuterie and ask if I can just order one cheese. Between the cheese and the charcuterie, it felt too much like we'd made a dinner out of nothing but fat. And as much as I love fat, it would have been even better to work in some vegetables and real meat, and to see what else the kitchen was whipping up.

Photo note: in a place this dark, the only way to avoid using flash is to have one person hold a candle directly above the food being photographed. I didn't discover this until the charcuterie platter. Still, I'm proud of not having resorted to flash photography.
Cav Website