Book Bindery Restaurant - Seattle (Updated with a review)

There was a post about the Book Bindery restaurant in Seattle.
Heading there tonight, and this is the wine list from their websites… At a glance, any good deals on it?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12609241/bookbindery-wine.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Merci!

Now updated with a brief review:

• Corkage is accepted - no limit on bottles, or ‘off the list’ restriction. $20 /btl
• Decant into a 2 L chemistry flask
• Reasonable wine list (although as some pointed out the Nigl “Privat” was too cheap… well it wasn’t on the ‘real list’… or I didn’t see it?)
  I did ask why there’s no vintages on some wines… The server says she doesn’t know. they don’t have a Somm on staff… the GM built the list… “he must have just missed the vintages”…
  to which i responded - really? there’s like 1/4 of the list missing vintages… she said she will ask.

Food:
Disappointing. That was the overall summary of the 4 of us that went.
Me/wife enjoy food and go out quite a bit… but the other couple really REALLY enjoys food, and flies around to hit Michelin restaurants…
Anyhow, we had

Appies:
Foie Terrine (x2 b/c we love Foie) - it had a sweet crust on the bottom… ok. but had a merlot reduction on top. more sweet… paired with asian pear… overall I couldn’t taste the foie. it was pretty much candy

Hamachi Crudo - Was it bad? no it was ok. Presentation was quite cute (noted by the other girl). But nothing ‘wow’d’ us… just like hamachi sashimi it seems

Sweetbreads - Not sure… if was the creme freche, or the fact that the piece was kind of raw in the middle… anyhow it tasted strange. I was just in Stockholm a couple of month ago, and had alot of sweetbreads there. This was not even close

Mains:
Lamb Shank - we ordered 2 of this too b/c we all love lamb. It was well seasoned, but it was dry. not tender… I expect lamb shank to be close to ‘fall off the fork’, but I had to really cut into it, and the meat was kind of dry.

Pork Duo - Holy good. yummy pork steak, and pork belly (woa! who doesn’t like this). This was an unexpected highlight!

Duck Breast - Ok… again nothing wrong, but nothing inspiring either.

Overall:
for a chef with his resume of Michael Mina, Per Se, etc… we probably had too high of an expectations. We expected more creativity, and in general more ‘flavors’ to the food.

One annoyance/nice gesture side note: They ran out of bread… WHAT? that was weird…
but apparently someone went to a store and bought some… WHAT X2? that was sweet.

That seems way low for the Nigl “Privat”–I wonder if it’s actually the Kremser Freiheit (their basic Gruner). If it is the Privat, I’d give that a go (even though I haven’t had it myself).

Agreed on the Nigl and the Ojai Bien Nacido is a good price for a restaurant as well.

cool. thanx for the quick look.
the Nigl does seem cheap (39 on WS)… but it’s got 2 relatively bad reviews on CT… (i.e. not even 90 )

Personally, I wouldn’t worry about those reviews. While I haven’t had the 08 Privat, I’ve gone through a number of delicious bottles of Nigl’s 08 version of its basic Gruner–and the Privat is typically a significant step up. Nigl’s basic 08 Gruner is a bit fatter than the 07 version, but it’s very nice. If you like Austrian wines, I think this is hard to go wrong on for $35. I bet the Knoll is delicious too.

The IWC (Peter Moser) rating of this wine was 92pts. Drink 2011-2023. I have no correlation experience w/ Peter Moser.

I have to say the missing vintage dates from many of the wines is a bit annoying.
Are we missing a note that says all wines are vintage 200? except where noted or something?

Yeah, that’s very bizarre and, if I didn’t live 3,000 miles away, annoying–especially given that it seems like someone put some thought into crafting this list.

That Pittnauer St.Laurent is an excellent drink, earthy, restrained and very Pinot like. I’d launch into a 2007 Milkulski Meursault then have the Pittnauer.

Without vintages tough to say but if the vintage is right i’d drink that Patrick Jasmin Cote Rotie all night long…

I’d go for the Agrapart

Thanks for all the rec’s… heading out now.
I’ll definitely ask the Somm why the list doesn’t contain vintages on some.

Perhaps this is a ‘sample’ menu and their real list has more wines/vintages?

updated first post with a review of the food/place

What wine did you have? Bummer about the sweetbreads - a fave of mine!