No Whining at Wine Cellar – Boston

When I hear the word cellar, it conjures the image of a dark, dank cobweb-covered closet where spiders scurry to escape the rats. Fortunately, the only thing about Wine Cellar that remotely resembles a cellar is that it’s garden level, which isn’t even underground enough to count. A cozy, graceful espace with quaint exposed brick and a beautiful painted mural on the back wall, everything about this place radiates warmth and invites you in. Feeling welcome, my roommate and I made the trek on a rainy weekday night to indulge our joint craving for wining and dining. I took a brief moment to whine about my inability to have wine (had to work in the morning), but it was smooth fondue-ing after that.

To my surprise, I rather enjoyed the Formaggio appetizer, despite the fact that the mozzarella somewhat neutralized the gruyere. Despite my dilutional pet peeve, the white wine compensated by adding a nice sharpness to the soft mozzarella and enhancing the gruyere, a refreshing break from my usual whining about the frat-boy nastiness of beer-laced cheese at cookie-cutter chains like Melting Pot.

The Latin broth was always an interesting choice of entrée broth – it wasn’t ideal for the lamb and didn’t combine well with beef tenderloin marinated in horseradish, but what could be better with shrimp and scallops? The wasabi dipping sauce and the alioli topped my list of dipping sauces though they were a little too cream-tastic for my lactose intolerance – too little made the meat bland but too much drowned out the taste. Otherwise, the cuts of meat were clearly quality, and the seafood was fresh.

The one thing I really whined about was the 50/50 dessert fondue. The dessert is literally half a cup of chocolate total served in a bowl over a candle. The chocolate barely covers the bottom of the bowl, which makes dipping a chore, and as generic as chains like Melting Pot can be, at least they have the decency to serve chocolate fondue in a real pot…

As my friends know, my signature line is “Would you like some cheese to go with your whine?” But Wine Cellar’s fondue provided very little reason to whine though I did get the fondue for two so I ended up whining all night about the button I popped off my jeans…if you serve portions that generous, you should sell pants for the gluttons to wear home!

It’s hard to rate a restaurant where you cook the food yourself so take my 4 stars with a grain of salt and a glass of red wine, but fear not, I’ll be back for more wining and dining, and I’ll let you know just how much whine I have.