The Tangled Vine

To celebrate my last night at aloft and her impending nuptials, I had dinner with Z-wonderful. She recommended Tangled Vine and I happily obliged though I was a little upset that I didn’t purchase The Blackboard Eats from a few weeks earlier. We walked up there from midtown because it was a somewhat nice spring day. Not nice enough to sit outside though which is what they wanted us to do. We opted to sit indoors. The restaurant is really not that big. The outside seating area is almost as large as the bar seating area. There are only a few tables that look like they're reserved exclusively for dinner. We didn't have a reservation so we sat at one of the counter height tables by the bar. From there we received our entrees. Z ordered the Asparagus Salad.

It looked delicious. It had a few more lettuce leaves than she was ready for but it also had some amazingly delicious mushrooms. I wad a huge fan of the salad. I ordered Crab Croquettes. 

OMG. I'm afraid amazing is not suitable enough to describe the miracle that entered my mouth. It was like eating baby crab cakes but in incredibly delicious form -no filler - just crab! Truly delightful. Since we were sans reservation we were not able to stay at that table the entire time. We were moved to the bar which was a little for dinner but we accepted it since we were hungry. Z's Beef Carpaccio was first to arrive. She was thrilled because it was so thinly sliced she could actually enjoy it.

I was similarly pleased with my Gnocchi.

It was served with shrimp and snap peas in a wine sauce. The shrimp was very fresh and tasted like it arrived in the kitchen that day. The more often I go out to eat and cook, the easier it is to notice fresh versus frozen. We decided against dessert at Tangled Vine and went elsewhere.

Overall the experience at Tangled Vine was a good one. The food was delicious but I was a little concerned about the depth of the menu. It is definitely a wine bar that happens to serve food rather than a restaurant that has wine, which is fine if that's what you're looking for. They don't have a lot of seating so make reservations to guarantee that you're not switching seats like we did.

Hungry yet?