Wexford wine bar just D'vine
BACKGROUND
Bill DiPaolo opened D'vine Wine Bar and Lounge on Sept. 5. It's a first venture into the restaurant biz for DiPaolo, who also is the owner of Oakwood Capital Development, a real estate company.
D'vine combines DiPaolo's love of wine and music.
He stocks 110 wines ranging from $25 to $180 a bottle and 80 wines at $7 to $20 a glass, and features live music every night except Monday.
The executive chef is Brian Annapolen, who served as executive chef at the Original Fish Market, Downtown, from 2004-08. The sommelier is former Manhattan resident Jerry Metallo, who spent the past seven years studying and working at wine bars there.
Beginning Jan. 4, D'vine will open at noon Sundays to offer the sort of family-style meal Italians enjoy getting together for on Sunday. Menus are not yet set. But DiPaolo is calling on his family heritage for inspiration and hoping that the plan will encourage his regular customers, many of whom have small children, to bring the entire family for lunch or dinner.
ATMOSPHERE
With live music most nights and a cellar of 110 wines, this restaurant and wine bar offers a convivial and laid-back venue for socializing and snacking.
There's a spare, post-industrial look to the main dining room -- a concrete floor, exposed ceiling and small bare tables in a variety of heights oriented toward the performance area. Pulsating blue lights and a television set are the focal point of the bar, which takes up most of one wall.
Patrons also can sip and sup from low tables placed in front of a comfy leather couch or in a more intimate niche area with banquettes and square cocktail tables divided by a blazing two-sided fireplace over which television monitors flicker. Two private lounges with fireplaces are available by reservation only.
Wine flights, a list of nearly a dozen appetizers and a weekday half-price small-plates offer from 4 to 7 p.m. encourage sharing, sampling and conviviality.
The room can get noisy with drinkers, diners and noshers bent on catching up with friends and family. Wait staff have their hands full, literally and figuratively, when the room fills up with customers ordering a multitude of small plates.
MENU
Items change monthly, as well as seasonally.
DiPaolo is dedicated to buying locally whenever possible. Desserts such as Flourless Chocolate Cake ($8) and Creme Brulee ($6) are made in house. Imported meats and cheeses come from Strip District purveyors Jimmy and Nino Sunseri, and bread products from Sunseri Sunrise Bakery.
Entrees range from fat, luscious Diver Scallops ($26), served in brown butter with greens, bacon and dirty rice, to a nicely cooked D'vine Steak Burger ($15) that was juicy and meaty, though lacking the advertised blue cheese.
You also could choose a 12-ounce Pepper Crusted New York Steak ($26) or Pasta of the Day ($16), which was ravioli filled with butternut squash on a recent night.
Entrees come with freshly made, warm and crusty bread, and a lackluster house salad in which iceberg lettuce predominates.
If variety is your thing, you could make a meal out of the flavorful and varied menu of appetizers. They're a thrifty choice from 4 to 7 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, when a select group is discounted 40 percent to 50 percent.
That's when we enjoyed the Antipasto Plate ($7, regularly $14) with its abundance of tissue-thin slices of meat, small triangles of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and a handful of green and black olives. We also fell in love with salty, savory Billy's Greens and Beans ($4, regularly $7) and the Chile Spiced Royal Prawn ($6, regularly $12) with three fat shrimp atop thin corn cakes.
From the regular small-plates menu, noshers also can opt for Roasted Garlic and Lemon Hummus with Crostini ($5), Mushroom Risotto ($10) or Jumbo Crab Cakes ($14).