So, I’ve never been wine tasting before…except for that one time when I tasted wine at the Sterling Vineyard in Napa…but I was 21 and didn’t know a good wine from cranberry juice (kinda still don’t)…but anyway. A couple of my high school friends that I hadn’t seen forever invited me out, and I was like, what the hell? Out of all the alcohol I don’t drink, wine is my favorite. So we headed out to Boka’s wine tasting event.
First off, Boka is very chic. Very chic. You sit taller and act cooler (or at least try to). There is even a booth that is strictly for cell phones. Yes, you heard me. A cell phone booth. It’s like a Clark Kent phone booth without the actual phone. It’s apparently all the rage in high end restaurants. Yeah. I know.
Two of us were tasting “virgins” so when we were handed a card telling us to state the varietal, we were like, “State the what now?” (For all you novices, varietals are basically the type of wine, i.e. Pinot Noir, Cabernet, etc. ) Then we had to guess whether it was Old World or New World. Again, huh? Basically, Old World is anything from Europe, while New World is everything else. I was like, just gimme the glass and let’s get this party started.
So I basically know nothing about wine, but I do know which ones I don’t like: Riesling that my mother orders (she likes sweet…I loathe sweet); and Chardonnay. (Me no likey)And this “knowing what you don’t like” philosophy actually worked. Cause the second white I had, I hated. So I figured it was chardonnay…and it was! I got two right out of four, which was pretty good considering A) I don’t drink a lot and B) when I do, I always order the same thing. And I beat the wine “experts”. So I felt pretty cool for like 2.5 seconds…until dinner. Then I wasn’t really cool anymore.
Did you know sweetbread is actually brains? Yeah, me neither. Boka is beautiful and very very tasty and completely foreign to me. I felt like I was on Top Chef and eating all this fancy-smacy food. The cool thing was that I never felt like I was out of place, well, until I would say something like, “is sweetbread bread?” and the foodies would be like, “not unless you mean brains”…But it was just a very cool vibe-y atmosphere. There’s a tree in the middle of the restaurant. A freaking tree. And it was still cool. And the food was yum-my.
So I experienced pork belly with this unbelievable quince sauce (I die!), rabbit confit, which I’d never had before (takes like venison); baby turnips in beet puree (yeah, it sounds weird, but surprising great)…even the freaking butter for the fresh rosemary bread was AMAZING. I was a little weirded out by the goat cheese foam on my short rib ravioli (yes, I did say foam), but when you pieced it all together, it was freaking amazingly good. To which my senses responded with a satisfied sigh of goodness, “So this is what good food tastes like.”
So my new adventure taught me the following:
A) Wine tasting is basically a grown-up board game…bring lots of friends and an iPhone.
B) Good food does really taste different than regular food…and yes, you have to pay for good food.
C) I am so lucky to still be friends with people from high school who, after not seeing them for long periods of time, can make me laugh and smile and make it seem like no time has passed at all.
