Fourth Avenue Wine Bar

Fourth Avenue Wine Bar & Café, at 107 Fourth @ Bank

This is another one of those places in the Glebe that needs to be tried out… and so I did. I must say, I have not been to a wine bar, but suspect that the feel and intent is similar to a tapas bar in Spain. This one was interesting in that it was nicely laid out. It had a great selection of wines. Nice metallic euro-feel about the place, bar and all. Since it provided that kind of ambiance…. You know, drink wine and snack on something…even though we arrive at 7:30pm after a long work day and was ready for dinner, we decided to have a couple of glasses of vino and some apps.

We ended up trying a white, Righetti pinot grigio and a Spanish red, Juan Gil (both $8). I particularly liked the red. Then we tried a couple of reds, an Omrah Shiraz (Australian) ($10.50) and a Bogle merlot (Californian) ($10). Both good, but not as nice as the Spanish red and more expensive at that.

For snacks and food in general, the value and tastes were disappointing. We tried the Portobello calvados…OK and expensive at $9. Deep fried Brie…. great if you like cheese and sweet cheery sauce. And a prosciutto plate, which was just ham from the deli… Their appetizers were OK and definitely not at a tapas/dim sum standard. We also had a beef kebab dinner, the meat was nicely curried, but the mushrooms were dry. One shish each. The rice had dried fruits in it and was cold… if that’s your thing... great... I hated it. And the beans were green, but hard and waxy and way undercooked. And $2 for bread.

Service was fast and efficient….no problems there… wines… great…. just the food was pretty much below par.

Bill was $45 a person all in, but I was hungry and had to eat something else later. Disappointing as with all the restaurants in the Glebe.

2007 06 22.

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Foodies websites

An interesting website to visit is travelingfoodies.blogspot.com.....

LiveToEat

By the way, for those who want my comments on individual restaurants in Ottawa, plus other people's comments, visit www.OttawaFoodies.com. My alias is 'LiveToEat'.

Here I shall try to be more thoughtful and loquacious; and put more of a story behind the food, restaurants, evolution and culture behind the dishes. Everything in context, right?

And perhaps also include the reasons for my biases....

2007 06 18.