Dining Out 074: Wine Bars Should Stop Doing Main Courses
An important PSA.
Since turning 30 I have entered into what I would term the “Wine Auntie” era of my existence. Giving into the Wine Auntie lifestyle is kind of a relief: it is sort of a general symbol of the ways in which, as I have aged, I have rid myself of any self-imposed expectations of coolness, and instead, I just do exactly what pleases me. As such, if you gave me the choice between going to the club and spending an evening sitting in a wine place, clearing two bottles between two people, beating some conversational dead horses, and getting some little slices of artisan ham involved for good measure, I’m picking the second one any day of the week. I may be cringe, as a wise memelord once typed, but I am free.
I raise this because it means that I have, over the last year or so, spent a great deal of time (too much time by all metrics that matter) in wine bars, and given this experience, I believe that there is an issue plaguing them at large: they have all absolutely got to stop doing main courses.
A wine bar, I suppose, exists at the mid-point between bar and restaurant, although they’re probably spiritually closer to the latter, as patrons are generally placed at assigned tables as they would be at restaurants, rather than standing, or seating themselves, as they might at a bar or pub. It makes sense, then, that food would be part of their offering: it absolutely should be, to keep people sticking around, and to accompany and help showcase the wines, which by and large are the main event. That food should begin and end with an extensive menu of starters.
Invariably, every wine bar I go to has a pretty strong nibbles game, whether that’s pickles, charcuterie, fresh bread with a weird flavoured butter, little fried shits (your croquetas, your arancini, your fritto misto, the list goes on), tartares and crudos, those thin little slices of Comte that you roll up, whatever. Some of the more memorable things I’ve eaten this year, in fact, have been wine bar nibbles: the Old Bay fries at Luna, the ever-changing devilled eggs at Bar Levan, cheese and jalapeno croquetas at Peckham Cellars, steak tartare on toast atop a plate veritably coated in egg yolk at sova.
What I have noticed, however, is that when you move onto the bigger plates at a lot of wine bars, invariably both quality and inventiveness seem to take a bit of a dip. This is perhaps as a result of necessarily smaller kitchens, where fewer processes can be undertaken, and perhaps as a general mismatch with the specific experience of Having a Wine. My sincere point of view, then, is that wine bars should just make life easier for themselves, and double down on the little bits, rather than getting caught up in mains and desserts too. How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Small Plate, etc. etc.
This is because of the reasons why I find myself in wine bars, which in general are twofold:
Usually, as mentioned, I am with my mates. In this situation, I am ideally drinking a number of different wines by the glass that each taste as close to juice as possible, and being borderline rude to my pals as I instruct them on the angles at which to take cute pictures of me (this makes me sound like a cow but I do also put in my own photography shifts for the avoidance of doubt). In the same way that I like mixing and matching the wines, I like having a taste of this and a bite of that throughout the evening. I actively want to fill up on starters, and I want there to be loads of different starters to choose from. If there were no mains on the menu, there would be more room for experimentation when it comes to the snacks, which is exactly what I’d like to see, because I - like many other diners of my ilk - do fundamentally just enjoy novelty.
Other times, I am on dates. Because I am not a coward, I am actually quite happy to do a full multi-course meal on a date (this is because it helps me to quietly assert dominance and alpha-dom by showing how quickly I can eat all the bread), but I know that this is not the case for a lot of people, I guess because of feelings of formality or self-consciousness or both, which is fair enough. What I have learned, however, is that it is very stupid to go on a date where you are drinking but not eating, and therefore the go-to in this situation is always going to be the bit of the menu that is least intimidating: you’re going for meats and cheeses, rather than a steak to share, right?
Obviously I am aware that advocating for small plates automatically makes anyone sound like a walking advert for gentrification, Big Picky Bits and the M&S-ification of the UK’s general dining landscape. So it is important for me to say: I love Large Plates. We should absolutely not, for example, be sharing things like burgers or pasta, because that is contrary to the very spirit of those foods.
This is rarely, however, the food of the wine bar, and there is something to be said for context. Wine bars in London seem to chase the tails of their European counterparts, where the accepted wisdom is that little dishes for the table (tapas, pintxos) are best to accompany a cold, alcoholic drink or seven. You can control the amount you order, you can tailor that order to your different glasses of wine if you’re a little fucking neek like me, and you can graze throughout the evening rather than filling up and not being able to move for half an hour afterwards. This is not to say, however, that this goes for absolutely everywhere, or that there are not some of London’s most insanely talented chefs manning the kitchens of wine bars - more just that I’d love to see their talents channelled towards foods that make sense in the context. And while there are of course many exceptions to what I’m saying - I would never be so much of a dickhead to think of any opinion of mine as the gospel truth, as I am merely someone who eats at a lot of restaurants, rather than a chef or an owner or any other hospitality professional - I do think that there is, ultimately, no need for main courses that muddy the experience. Perfect little bites are what is required here: no more and no less.
I want to be wowed by cheese with honey, and bowled over by house-cured hams, and electric shocked by zingy plates of ceviche. I do not need a confit chicken leg to believe in a place’s credentials. Not every day Hereford pork chop. All you need to do is give me a gilda, something cold in a glass, and a smile, and I’ll be sold. It really doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.
Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill. Weekly articles are free to read every Sunday, and you can follow me on Instagram here, but if you’d like to see more, you can subscribe for £5 pcm or £50 annually to get extra content a few times a month.
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