Imagine you go to a nice restaurant with friends. Low lights, leather chairs, nothing on the menu under $20 and lots of unfamiliar words describing techniques and ingredients in complicated dishes.
The meal is fine, the company and conversation far more interesting, and you decide to linger and indulge in a little dessert. You go for the crème brûlée.
The well-dressed waiter announces the dessert and smiles as he places it in front of you.
Seriously, what is up with that? Is the dishwasher broken? Do they offer a takeout menu? Who on earth decided this was an appropriate presentation?
I laughed and took a picture (after the waiter was gone, of course) and took a bite. It was pretty delicious. So I got over myself and went for it. If they can serve crème brûlée in aluminim foil, I can drop my own facade of manners and run my finger on the side to get every last bit of it, right?
The part of the meal I can't get over though was the wine list. It was chock-full of big california names, with pretty healthy mark ups making most wines over $75 and many well higher. That wasn't suprising. What threw me was that there were no vintages listed on over 90% of the wines.
I was scandalized, until almost everyone at the table assured me they rarely consider vintage when ordering in a restaurant. They usually aren't certain what differences to expect based on the vintage, or the producer and region (or price) are so much more of a factor that they often don't even register the vintage when ordering.
Would love to hear what you in the blogschusphere think about this. How important is vintage to you in making an ordering/purchasing decision? Do you often see menus without vintage (or creme brulee in aluminum for that matter?) Do I need to get out of San Francisco more often?
