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(Note: This is a long-ago post from a previous blog I shared with my husband. Since it’s food-related, I decided it should live here.)

David and I went to Vinology recently and, in true literary form, I think the decor of the place was pretty much a metaphor for the whole experience: it held a tremendous amount of promise–it’s really quite nice inside, reminiscent of some of the more modish big-city restos I’ve been in, and you’d never know the space once housed an office supplies shop. The ambience is upscale, yet casual (the bar seems to dominate the whole place, even though there’s a partial wall between it and the main dining area), and the art is quite lovely and creative–excepting the big poster of New Zealand wine producing areas hanging askew, as posters are wont to do, at the back of the dining room. That poster, despite being thematically appropriate, just didn’t belong in that room, was just one tiny element that threw everything else off. That was pretty much the theme for the evening–much was done well, but there was always some little thing not quite right.

Because I had heard good things about it, we started out with the calamari with green papaya salad, and, because it was still happy hour and they we offering their mini “sliders” for $1 apiece (instead of $9 for three), we each ordered one of those as well. The calamari were good, as expected (David appreciated the lightness of the breading, since it allowed the flavor of the sauce to come through), but the mini burgers were just sort of “eh”–the burgers themselves were fine, but not stunning, and the house-made ketchups (mango, yellow pepper and the traditional tomato) were pretty bland (although David thought the mango variety went rather well with the calamari). Glad we only paid a buck each for them.

Actually, back the tape up–really, I started with a glass of wine, which I felt was obligatory, seeing as we were at an establishment whose chief raison d’etre was wine. After spending what was probably far too little time perusing the wine list, with its classification system employing cute little logos (big red lips for juicy, etc.), I picked a rose, Vin de Lune, just because I’d been reading about roses recently, and wanted to try one out (if you want to know how I rate as a wine expert, I’m the sort of person who will read articles on wine with interest, then throw up my hands in frustration when actually confronted with picking a wine in a store and end up using the “eenie-meenie-miny-mo” method of choosing a wine). Not a great pick, I must say–our waiter described it as “crisp and fruity”, but I could barely taste anything at all. In our waiter’s defense, he did ask what I thought of the wine and offer to bring me something else when I expressed a certain lack of excitement over it, but I declined, figuring (a) maybe it would taste better with the food (not really), (b) maybe it would “open up” as it warmed (it did, sort of–by the end of our meal I could taste something vaguely fruity, in a sour kind of way), and (c) I didn’t really want to go through the wine roulette again, for another $8-$15 a pop.

On to the soup (I declined the salad, figuring I’d save room for dessert–not a great move on my part, turns out). David ordered what turned out to be a very good chicken noodle soup, with nice, fat noodles, apparently freshly made, that seemed to just melt in your mouth. Yum.

As my entree, I ordered the “brick-pressed” duck breast, with ancho-honey reduction, polenta and swiss chard; David ordered the lamb, with a blackberry sauce, corn pudding and chard (chard was apparently the veggie du jour). David’s lamb was quite nice–I sampled a few bites, and the tartness of the sauce went nicely with the lambiness of the meat (which was at least mildly lamby, unlike the lamb chops at Custom House). My duck was, how shall I say, sparse–just three slim slices draped against a smallish mound of polenta (our calamari appetizer was bigger). The ancho-honey reduction was also rather bland, to return to our theme for the evening–sweetish, but with none of the spiciness or smokiness I would have expected from the ancho, even though it admittedly isn’t the hottest pepper around. Still, my duck had one surprising thing going for it, which really made the dish–all of the elements harmonized very well, something I haven’t really encountered much before, even in better meals. It made me wish I could have “super-sized” my entree, a la McDonald‘s. (By the way, I’ve since revisited the posting on eGullet that made me sit up and take notice of this restaurant–the portions in the photos of the food are significantly bigger. I’m guessing the management must have decided to up the receipts by shrinking the portions. Either that, or they were really running low on duck the night we went.)

Dessert was, again, good but not great. I had a chocolate-hazelnut torte–three small triangles which looked very pretty on the plate, but under the shiny ganache was a thickish layer of a creamy substance that reminded me of Sanders’ bumpy cake (not much hazelnut flavor at all). David, unsurprisingly, had the chocolate pots de creme, which was nice and thick and chocolaty.

In short, I’m not sure we’ll be going back to Vinology again, for those prices, but if we do, I’ll definitely order more of the small plates (and be more particular about my wine).