Meet Frank the Tank

On Friday night I had the serendipitous experience of eating at Addison for the second time. As the French-nouveau restaurant at the heart of The Grand Del Mar, Addison is one of the few places I have been where I truly understood how food preparation could be considered an art form, and the only place I've been where butternut squash, mustard, carmelized apples and crispy shallots really do taste good together.

The best thing about this restaurant, though, is not the five-star dining but the way that the staff actually make the wine experience fun...

San Diego Restaurant Week

I just got home from back-to-back trips to visit my parents and to Park City for the Sundance Film Festival, and while I had a great time, I was bummed that I had to miss San Diego Restaurant Week. Then I found out today that Restaurant Week has been extended and all the deals will be on through January 29. The event is a great way to try a wider variety of food and explore new places without paying the full price; more than 180 San Diego restaurants offer 3-course meals for $20, $30, or $40. Plus, where there is good food, there is usually good wine, and many restaurants have specials on their drink menus as well. I'm hoping to try out a new place this week; let me know if you have a recommendation in the comments below.

Coincidentally, this month's issue of San Diego magazine profiles six of the hottest new restaurants in the greater San Diego area, and two of them are having Restaurant Week deals: Roseville in Point Loma and 333 Pacific in Oceanside. Rounding out the rest of the Top 6 are The Red Door in Mission Hills, West Coast Tavern in North Park, Hane Sushi at Banker's Hill, and Cucina Urbana in Hillcrest. I discovered the latter this summer with one of my fellow wine fanatics, and we fell in love with the California Cuisine/Italian fusion menu, as well as the eclectic wine list. She liked it so much she had her birthday dinner there several weeks ago, and everyone who attended gave the restaurant rave reviews. I highly recommend trying it out, both for the food and to switch up your wine drinking routine.

Profile: The Barrel Room - Rancho Bernardo

My goal with this blog is to provide not only fun stories about the wine experience, but also profiles of the places I visit in case you want to check them out yourself. Here is my first attempt:

The Place: The Barrel Room, 16765 Bernardo Center Drive, San Diego (Rancho Bernardo). Arrived at 7 pm-ish on Friday night.

The Face: The Barrel Room bills itself as "North County's only retail, wine bar, and full casual dining restaurant..."It’s located in a shopping center between a Big 5 and a Round Table Pizza. Inside, the décor is informal, with a style that our group placed somewhere between hacienda and casual lodge; hacienda for the dark wood and wrought-iron accents, casual lodge for the massive flat screen mounted above the bar, ensuring that the single men sitting there don’t miss a second of football playoff coverage.

An impressive collection of more than 180 bottles occupies one wall in the main dining area, a sea of soldiers ready to battle our limited will power. The lighting is dim in a romantic way, and the amped up noise level indicates that people are having a good time.

Find out the rest after the jump:

Welcome to the San Diego Wine Scene

Before I can expect you to take anything I have to say about wine seriously, I have to make a confession:  five years ago, my wine of choice was Charles Shaw Cabernet.  Granted, I was in college, so I should get bonus points just for drinking something that didn't come out of a can.  Or a box.  However, I will lose those points all over again when you find out that I went to college in San Luis Obispo, a mere 30 minutes South of Paso Robles, which is home to some of the best wineries in California (the region is especially well-known for their Zinfandel...the red kind).  In any case, to say my palate was untrained is an understatement.  I was perfectly happy to linger in this ignorant bliss, and it didn't hurt my budget either.

That all changed when I took a job during my last year of grad school to work in the tasting room at Foley near Lompoc, CA, an hour South of San Luis (are you seeing the pattern? Surrounded by great wine and still drinking barrels of Chuck. A travesty).  For six months, I was exposed to mouthwatering Pinot, spicy Syrah, and buttery Chardonnay.  I was teaching people about the wines I poured and simultaneously learning more than I ever thought possible about planting, growing, picking, processing, bottling, pairing, and, of course, drinking. I began to appreciate what wine was all about.

That appreciation has continued to grow even though I no longer work in a tasting room.  Some of my best memories involve drinking wine in Lompoc, in Napa, in Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo, even in Italy.  I can't name most of the wines I have tasted, but I can tell you some amazing stories.  And now that I'm in San Diego, I am committed to finding not only great tasting wines, but also great wine experiences.