Guess and get a discount
While many high-end restaurants offer their customers one night a week with no (or reduced) corkage fee, Montrachet in Tribeca has introduced something beyond their Monday night BYOB that may delight wine geeks even more since it is offered nightly: guess that wine.
You name the price range and the sommelier will bring a bottle and pour it blind. The more wine geeky details you get right, such as country of origin, region, producer, vintage, and grape varietal, the bigger your discount. Discounts range from 10 to 100 percent. A chance a free wine?!? The more confident you are, the higher a price point you’ll try.
I guess you’re taking your chances with more than the wine–Randall Lane writes in TimeOut New York that under new chef Richard Franabe the food is “maddeningly mediocre one night and transcendent the next.”
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Why do some restaurants seem to always be “coming soon” and take forever to open? In the same issue of TONY, Heather Tierney writes that “the biggest headache, according to the chefs and the owners, is the wait for the liquor license from the State Liquor Authority (SLA).” The SLA takes into account the views of community boards who can oppose the granting of a liquor license on grounds of public drunkenness in the area. Jason Hennings, owner of the European Union whose launch has been delayed eight months, says of the community boards, “It really depends on catching them on a good day.”
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And, finally, the same (double) issue of TONY notes the pending opening of Del Posto, “Molto Mario” Batali’s new restaurant that is big in every way: 24,000 sq ft, dining on three stories, and a 50,000 bottle wine cellar. Yikes.
Del Posto, way over on the West side: 85 Tenth Ave at 16th
Technorati tags: wine | food & drink | New York | restaurants
On December 17th, 2005 at 12:56 am ,Jack wrote:
Sounds like a fund idea (at Montrachet). Hope it catches on!