sweet, thanks Alan. 5:30 start time?
All I will check on the space for as many as we have. If you can wait until Monday to confirm everything. Also stemware is… Let’s just say they have them so if want to bring your own.
Ed, no rush, this is a month and a half away. Any info you get will be great.
Wood Tavern is great, but unless there’s a private dining room I wasn’t aware of, I doubt we could get them to accommodate a group of our size even with a super early start time. WT is packed at lunchtime and dinner every day of the week, and I’d be surprised if they’d be OK with a large group like us holding down space for several hours. Also, it’s loud and the tables are set very close to each other, so not ideal for mingling if there’s no private dining area.
Lemme make some calls and see if I can come up with anything worthwhile…
Gene, that would be great. Camino is a good space, but I don’t know if they would give us any break on corkage.
The Oakland burg group I go to routinely has our offlines in both Camino and Wood Tavern. Even for us, Camino corkage is pretty much the same, $25/bottle. They do not allow us to bring our own stems and they only have small Chablis glassware, which is something I really do not like. Food is amazing though. As for Wood Tavern, they do have nice Burg glasses but the corkage is roughly the same but is slightly a bit better, the only thing is that they always book us late because they know we take up more time (they book us at the last turnover) so I am not sure if they can book us early. Although we can tell them that our party needs to finish by 7:20 pm as someone is leaving for the airport, that might help.
Joe, how many people are typically at the WT offlines?
6 to 8
Yea, anything above seating for 8 is probably a tough sell for WT. Especially if we’re a first seating rather than a last seating.
Thanks for all the leg work guys.
To answer Alan, the food at Duende is not spicy, its Spanish fare. They have a table that can fit 12 that is off to the side, but I can ask if they could seat us up somewhat away from the main dining area. As for corkage, I’m trying to work on it, but it normally is $25 per.
As for the wine is this going to be a GC kind of thing?
With Sifu… Is there another kind??
I think he’ll accept Cros Parantoux or Rousseau CSJ. Or Coche Perrières.
Looking at photos, Duende looks perfect. I get paying some corkage, but I hate the idea of being charged for every bottle a group of 12 brings in. Maybe they would do something like a flat $15 per person? BTW, their web site says “Parties of 7 or more will be served a prefix chef menu”.
For wine, I’d suggest that we leave it at anything worthy. A Rhys is totally acceptable. Plenty of 1er burgs are great wines.
I’ll also accept roulot perrieres and Leroy beauxmont
Flat fee plz. I plan on bringing/shipping four bottles.
If the corkage is reasonable/workable at Duende, then I am a big +1, I love the food there. Did not know about the pre-fixe for 7+ people, but would honestly prefer a la carte (if possible).
Flexiballa.
Any of you fine chaps want to volunteer to be my wine mule for me to ship wine to later in April? I asked Alan but he’s coming back from france the night before, don’t want to hassle a jetlagged man!
edit: Craig has. Thanks!
I’d be interested if there is room (no worries if not) and if work permits. Brand new to the offline scene, but I figure it would be good to put some faces to names beyond randomly running into Alan here and there.
J C h e n g