Restaurant Review: Vinology

What and Where:

Vinology | 110 South Main Street | Ann Arbor, MI 48104 734-222-9841

Ratings (1=terrible, 5=mind-blowingly great)

Comments

• My millions of regular readers will know that it’s been a long time since I’ve done a restaurant review in quite a while. Why? Well, mainly because I haven’t been any place new worth writing about one way or the other in a long time. Until Vinology.
• I went here on a work-related event with three other people. Which was good because a) I got to hear about a few different dishes in one stop and b) I didn’t have to pay for it (in theory, because I need to be reimbursed for the bill, but that’s another story).
• Overall, the food isn’t that good and it is horrifically over-priced.
• They promote themselves as a wine bar, and indeed, they’ve got lots of wine. They have this kind of cool wine menu scheme where they have a very user/amateur-friendly wine drinking menu, but the problem is that a glass of wine on the low-end in this place is $8, and on the higher-end, it’s $15.
• We ordered a cheese appetizer that I think was at least $12. It was a choice of three different cheeses, which was nice. But if it added up to 8 ounces of cheese, I’ll chew on the glass the wine came in. I mean, I don’t want to be a cheapskate here, but this just seemed out of line to me.
• They have a “small plate” menu, but we all had main courses. One diner had the Kobe steak, and she loved it. Another had a roasted chicken, and her impression was that it was “okay.” A third diner had the cobb salad. He said he ordered this based the menu description that promised lobster, but he said it was mostly lettuce. I had a duck dish that I thought was kind of on the icky side– far too sweet, odd chunks of meat, and, inexplicably, it included white bread toast. So one for four.
• We all split a desert, some kind of hazelnut torte thing, and that was pretty tasty.
• The service was, well, earnest I suppose, but it was pretty slow, and this on a night where the place was pretty empty.
• So the verdict from me is this is a good place to go and get a glass of wine (and maybe a desert) after you eat someplace else.