Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Uva, 9/14/05

Uva is a chic-magnet. Seriously, when I arrived at Uva at 7:00 tonight after booking up 2nd Avenue for 30 blocks, I realized that this place was chock a block with females. Uva, located on 2nd Avenue, between 76th & 77th is a single guy's dream.

JB did not have the pleasure of this male paradise tonight, instead I blended with the crowd by meeting my friend Laura for some wine and snacks.

Uva is essentially a wine bar with food. When you arrive they give you the wine list first, 3 pages of by the glass, two pages of by the bottle and one page of beer. We needed to ask for the food menu.

What we had was pretty good. I like to call them snacks, but we really had enough for a meal. Laura and I started with a traditional bruschetta and a cheese plate.

Laura loved the bruschetta. It was crispy and not too oily.

The cheese plate confused us. You get to pick three cheeses for $16. We chose a goat cheese, a parmesan and something that said it was made with buffalo milk which we assumed was mozzarella-like. When our cheese plate arrived we recognized the parmesan, or at least we thought we did, and something that looked like brie. The third cheese a mystery.

When our server finally came over, we had had a few confirming bites and knew something was not right. She took it back and said she would fix it. She came back with the same remaining cheeses declaring that the mystery cheese was a goat cheese and the brie was the buffalo. She also had a replacement parmesan. Strange. Still we ate on and sipped our wines. Almost all cheese is fine with us.

The bread served was fresh and delicious. Doughy, not hard and it was refilled frequently. The olive oil, once we got it separated from the vinegar, was an adequate companion.

Finally, we had a salad of capon, apple and a mustard dressing. It was our server's favorite. And it was good, the chicken especially.

Next time (and there will be a next time since JB will sprint here for the female factor), I may consider some of the more substantial dishes like ricotta gnocchi or pesto shrimp, but for tonight this was perfect.

When we looked up from our meal, we noticed that although a few men had straggled in, women were still in the lead. And at this place, I think they always will be.

Until we eat again, KLB

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