WineTasteTV - Offering Wine Education and Information Videos

365 Days  


All-Purpose Pinot Grigio at Harvest, Cambridge

Posted 08/19/2008 at 05:16 PM by Cathy

Last week we pulled together a list of Restaurant Week participants who, in addition to the prix fixe lunch and/or dinner menus, also included a wine component in their offering.

That list included some of Boston's heavy hitters when it comes to the wine department. Excelsior. Legal Seafoods. Icarus.

It also included some surprises in the sense of I-didn't-realize-that-restaurant-was-that-thoughtful-about-wine. dbar, for example, offered a wine pairing for each item on their dinner menu. Dante offered four wines by the glass at lunch, and four different wines by the glass at dinner. If these are places you've been meaning to go, whether for the food or the wine, there's no better time then when specials like this are on the table.

The most curious part of the list, though, may have been those restaurants that you do visit on a regular basis, who you know have an interesting wine list, but who for Restaurant Week put themselves in a position to say, We think that this particular red, and this particular white, are appropriate and flexible enough to accommodate each of the menu options we've planned for lunch or for dinner.

One of those restaurants for me was Harvest in Cambridge.

For lunch they offered two choices in each category: appetizer, entrée, dessert, wine. The wines, Angelini Pinot Grigio or Fontanafredda Barbera, were presumably chosen to pair mainly with the entrées, Lemon Crusted Yellowtail Sole or Grilled Pork Loin.

The Pinot Grigio – fresh, fruity, cool, accommodating – turned out to be agreeable with the sole (which on its own was unfortunately overcooked and dry), neutralizing to the Verrill Farms sweet corn soup (which was silky and slightly salty), and complementary to the chocolate cognac torte (which was as dense and rich as the Pinot Grigio was light and easy).

Harvest chose one white wine – for a short $5 up-charge – from its list to pair with its 6-item Restaurant Week menu. It may have been putting all their eggs in one basket, but it's a basket both stylish and functional.

Email Icon E-Mail | Digg Icon Digg this! | del.icio.us del.icio.us
RSS Icon 365 Days RSS | RSS Icon Comments RSS for this post

 

Comments

No comments have been posted for this article.

About the Author

Cathy Huyghe
Cathy Huyghe

Cathy Huyghe writes about drinking wine every day in the Boston area. She finds the quirky characters, the after-hours events, and the surprising stories that make up Boston's vibrant local wine scene. But no matter where she is, what she's doing, or who she's with, she mostly just wants to drink the stuff.

Her first restaurant gig was at Chez Panisse, when she knocked on the kitchen's back door and asked if she could work there. She's also worked for Jean-Pierre Vigato in Paris and Thomas Keller in Las Vegas. She went to graduate school at Harvard (twice), and her writing has run in Boston magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Edible Boston, and on Nevada Public Radio and Grist.org.

Subscribe via Email

Get 365 Days updates by adding your email address here:

Recent Posts

Archives

My Scrügy Profile
Sip on this:
Quarts of charm? Where did the name for Quarts de Chaume come from? Find the Answer
 

Video Index