Camacho Watcho

While I like to have a good time, I have to admit that bachelorette parties get a little much for me nowadays. So when I got the invite for a friend’s bachelorette party at Spill the Wine for a five-course dinner with wine pairings, I was ecstatic! Food, wine, friends…perfect!

The group of fifteen of us gathered there a few Saturdays ago, seated on the wine bar side as the restaurant was full with a wedding reception. *What a great idea for a wedding reception location!* Individual menus printed with both the courses and the wines sat waiting for us, which of course I loved!

The first course was a salad with radishes and a mango vinaigrette paired with a Radcliffe sauvignon blanc. The salad was good, perhaps a little too much vinaigrette on mine, but it paired well with the light sauvignon blanc. *You may notice the hefty wine pours from the previous picture…I wasn’t complaining!

The next course was a beautiful piece of salmon (a generous portion in my opinion) with warm peaches and balsamic vinegar. I loved the salmon, but wasn’t crazy about the Valley of the Moon chardonnay it was paired with – it had absolutely no flavor.

The third course was my favorite. Perhaps this was because it was comfort food and I had had two glasses of wine by this time, but I loved the wild mushroom croquette with cream sauce. The table was buzzing about how good this dish was, which I equated to a scoop of hot dish with a lightly crisp exterior. Yum! And the wine – Luzon monastrell/syrah was a very nice pairing.

Unfortunately the next course, grilled beef tenderloin kabobs with red onion and peppers, was a flop. Overcooked, dry and absolutely no seasoning sums up this course. The Root 1 cabernet sauvignon was good, but not good enough to save the dish.

Last, but definitely not least, we were served dessert. Vanilla bean ice cream with a triple berry coulis (the menu only listed raspberry so the additional berries were a yummy bonus)! Paired with a sweet dessert wine, I was in heaven. There is something so simple and tasty about ice cream and berries.

I’ve always really liked Spill the Wine. They have a nice wine menu and good wine specials – $15 bottles of wine during happy hour and 1/2 priced bottles on Mondays. The food is good – the salads are consistently great.

And our wine dinner?

Overall it was good. It had its highs and it had its lows. However, for the bargain price of $35 for five-courses plus wine, I thought it was a great deal and a fantastic idea for a bachelorette party.

Tags: Food, Minneapolis, party, restaurant, twin cities, wine

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 8:34 pm and is filed under Entertainment, Food. 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.