Reviewed: Vinology Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, Michigan is consistently listed as one of the top places to live in the United States. The city, intertwined with one of the world’s finest Universities in the University of Michigan, has all the amenities of big city life and all of the charm of a small midwestern town. There’s something for everyone here.
If you’re looking for music, you can find the finest symphony orchestras lining up to play in one of the most acoustically perfect venues on the planet, while down the street a new college punk band is opening for the next Pearl Jam at The Blind Pig, and in between them an acoustic guitar set is played to a crowd at The Ark that started lining up hours earlier for seating that after all these years is still first come first served.
If you are looking for art, the newly renovated UMMA houses classical pieces seasonally, while every summer you can join a half-million visitors that come to see upstart artists peddle their creations for four festive days on closed down city streets.
If you’re looking for food, you can stumble into the Fleetwood Diner after an evening of drinking to get that greasy goodness you are craving as your water glass is nestled ever so closely to another glass that is catching water dripping from a leaky converted trailer ceiling. You can also make your way to Kerrytown, and explore the enticing creations of Eve, who only uses the freshest and often local ingredients to assemble a French inspired but decidedly midwestern influenced menu that always seems to have something new…even if you are a regular. Somewhere in the middle of greasy and classy, you will find countless options in the genres of real Italian, foo foo Italian, French, Korean, Japanese, pan-Asian, Seafood, and a steakhouse that I contend remains the best kept secret in the state. Of course, there’s also the culinary crown jewel known around the world…Zingerman’s. Once just a deli, it’s now a multiple business juggernaut specializing in, well, everything that tastes good. A creamery, a bakery, a deli, a roadhouse, and business training for good measure.
Vinology:
110 South Main Street, Ann Arbor, MI
(734) 222-9841
Open 7 days a week. Lunch Monday thru Saturday. Dinner Monday to Sunday.
On the north end of the “main strip” of Main Street in Ann Arbor lies Vinology, a wine bar touting small plates, wine pairings, and wine education. They’ve been open for a few years now, but for some reason I have avoided it, despite passing it on my way to and from work each and every weekday. Partly the result of it being at the end of “the strip” and therefore not conducive to combining with another establishment for pre-dinner drinks, and partly because I’m not buying into this wine-food craze. Ok, ok, it’s not a craze. It’s a way of life. Wine is interweaved into the food world like nothing else. You’d be more likely to find a restaurant without forks than a restaurant without wine. But let me just throw it out there…do you think it might be, at least some part of it, a sham? Of course they want you to buy wine. Any idea what the markup on wine is at a restaurant? We’re talking 300-400% here folks. It’s a goldmine. And you can’t blame them for wanting to “educate” you on the subject. A certain mystique has been created around the pressed and fermented grape, where it comes from, what it’s combined with, what it compliments. Even the blossoming flowers and fruits that might have been growing nearby the grape before it’s plucked and juiced are open for discussion and interpretation.
I’m not gonna lie and tell you I haven’t had that perfect pairing experience, where the wine hits your tongue and continues with great accuracy the flavors of the food you just chewed, sometimes even bringing out new flavors. But you know what else continues those flavors? More food. Other food. Herbal flavors that continue course to course are equally if not more impressive.
Damn, now I sound really anti-wine. I’m not. Christ, I’m Italian. I’ve been drinking wine since I was five. Sure, it came out of a big jug stamped Ernest and Julio Gallo, but I promise you that 90% of the patrons of Vinology wouldn’t know the difference if you slipped them an EJG Rosa in place of their pinot noir.
All of that being said, I went to Vinology to eat. And from that aspect, they overpromised and underdelivered. The menu was like a shameless plug for the local food movement, and the waiter continued that with his “we try to get all of our ingredients from within 100 miles of this location” shtick. “Except for our seafood, you wouldn’t like that. Ha ha.” It all seemed so rehearsed. While I appreciate local ingredients and the movement as a whole, I’d like a little less advertising of the fact, especially when, upon further review of the menu and hunting for the word “local” I found that there were probably few things that were actually local. Here’s another thought, what if Michigan duck sucks compared to 
Vancouver duck? If I’m in Texas, I certainly don’t want any stunted growth, heatstroke survivor venison. Anyway, I initially thought that all the local items were in bold print on the menu, but then realized that it was just random words that were put in bold print. I humorously thought maybe there was an appendix or glossary somewhere nearby that was going to elaborate on those bold print words, but no such luck.
The disdain I had for the appearence of the menu, and the local farm ads in a column on the right, was quelled quickly when I started to look past the fonts and typesettings and actually read the menu. It was impressive. A good menu should make you tell the waiter to come back in a minute at least twice. This one had me turn away our eager local food peddler three times before deciding on the pork loin, served with fat back and braised cabbage. Of my two cohorts, one chose the tuna with eggplant-roasted garlic puree and duck fat potatoes, and the other went with the short rib served with chestnut bread pudding. These were all from the “Main” portion of the menu, and not the “Small Plates” portion, meaning that these were entrees, not snacks. Together we added a “small plate” of sweetbreads and each opted for a mixed greens salad, mine with roasted beets and goat cheese.
The sweetbreads came with what was supposed to be a camembert crostini, but was really just two…count ‘em, two…small plain toasted baguette slices to go with the three (!) grossly underseasoned but fairly well prepared hunks of delicious and creamy veal thymus. The dipping sauce, described as dijon caper dressing, might have been thinned out grainy beer brat mustard with capers mixed in.
The salad course turned out to be the largest serving of food we got that night, and probably the best tasting as well. A good amount of mixed greens, very fresh (local? probably not) and earthy, were great though slightly underdressed. I was happy to have the additional flavors of a some nicely roasted beets and very creamy goat cheese on mine, as my co-diners seemed to be rubbing salad on the bottom of their plates trying to gather up the last morsel of vinaigrette that just wasn’t there.
The pork loin, 5 tiny medallions served with some kind of forgettable reduction and a small nest of braised red cabbage, would have been almost inedibly dry if not for the one-inch square of fat back that I fork-stacked with each bite. The plate itself was the only thing that distinguished this from being a “small plate.” At $26, I was stuck imagining the 18 pound pork loin that I could have purchased at Sam’s Club and fed off of in chunks for a month.
The short ribs were also underseasoned, continuing the evening’s trend. I can’t really explain the odd cut of short rib either. Half of it seemed normal, and was somewhat tender. The other half was cut along the muscle striation. Tough to explain, I’ve never seen it before. It was tougher, so much so that we could have requested a steak knife. The chestnut bread pudding was unremarkable…but surprisingly seasoned decently.
The tuna has a little story behind it. When ordering, the waiter initially had a temperature suggestion of medium-rare for the tuna, which I could barely register as a colossal mistake before he followed it with “or as rare as you can take it,” which seemed to be a dare, an admission of error for making the med-rare suggestion, and an undermining and belittling of the customer. No matter, straight rare was what my tuna vet friend was going to order anyway. Rare it is, tough guy. But after all of that, it came out half med-well, half med. And the tiny hunk of fish was cut in half, so anybody that took a glance at it would have known that it was not cooked properly. And the fact that it was inconsistent across the piece was disturbing. They decided to slide one by us, we decided not to send it back…they win this battle. But I’m writing this review, so I win the war.
To their credit, Vinology is a beautiful venue, from it’s old school front face to it’s modern yet rustic interior. It is at its heart a wine bar. They should stop trying to be something else. Stick with the small plates (they’re all small anyway) and get some cheese on a wood board on this menu. Hell, it can even be local cheese. If you are going to continue to offer “Mains,” they are all going to require a 50% increase in size and a 25% decrease in price. And continue your pursuit of local ingredients, but don’t adorn the menu with it…my server informing me should be enough, as long as he’s not as pretentious as the one I had.
I will probably return to Vinology some day, just not someday soon. Maybe for one of their events, or for a glass of wine, but certainly not under the pretense of dinner, beacuse the only thing they’re really serving up is a healthy local portion of “you’ll go broke before you are satiated.”
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Food, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
