When Wayne Laing was planning to open a wine bar in Hampden, he wanted it to be more of a cafe than some wine bars are. It was an ambitious undertaking, given that the kitchen equipment of the new 13.5% Wine Bar consists of a panini grill, two convection ovens and a slicer.
Wine and beer are still more important here than food, of course. Laing is the former owner of the nearby Wine Underground, and his new space on The Avenue is a retail shop as well as a place to get a glass of vino. All the wines on the 20-foot-high retail wall include an $8 corkage fee. If you buy a bottle to take away, the fee is deducted from the price. It seems a roundabout way of doing things, but I sort of get why, if your primary focus is on the people who drink it there. The international list includes more than 30 wines by the glass and 200 by the bottle.
From the moment it opened, 13.5% has been a hit. When we went, the place was packed, and people were waiting outside for tables. We sat instead at the bar to wait, which gave me a chance to see the fancy equipment that keeps opened bottles of wine fresh. It looks like a refrigerated case for 12 bottles; pumped-in inert gas keeps the wine from oxidizing. The bottles that receive this special handling, the bartender told us, were the ones that were most expensive by the glass. The open bottles of cheaper wines are gone before the evening ends.
Few of the wines by the glass are expensive, however. There is a California chardonnay for $16 and an Italian red for $22, but there are also $5 glasses and many in the $7 range.
It's the food I found expensive. Maybe not for Harbor East, but for Hampden.
I like the way everything - salads, appetizers, panini and small plates - is kept under $10. The ingredients are high quality and the presentation is beautiful. But be warned: The serving sizes are small.
The antipasto plate, for instance, is a lovely arrangement of prosciutto and such, with a bit of cheese, some olives, a grilled red pepper and so on. But there's no bread, so you order some of the excellent grilled bread to eat with it. (It comes with a fine balsamic vinegar, olive oil and Parmesan cheese to dip it in.) Pretty soon, you're talking real money.
When the kitchen isn't slammed as it was this weeknight, you might have better luck than we did with the small plates. The Il Casanova, half a game hen roasted with a little honey, was overcooked, which made it dry. The asparagus spears covered with a bit of melted brie were a little wrinkled themselves.
