Cellar Clearing at Ivy Restaurant, Boston

365 Days

Cellar Clearing at Ivy Restaurant, Boston

Posted 11/13/2008 at 10:45 AM by Cathy

By Jill Shemin

Last night the cold, Boston-in-November wind swept across the Common and right by the door of Ivy Restaurant on Temple Place.

On a normal night Bostonians would take it in stride, then they'd stride right into the nearest building. But last night, many Bostonians braved the wind and waited in line outside Ivy, for their turn to enter the restaurant's hyper-crowded second-annual Cellar Clearing event.

Inside was a chic, cosmopolitan crowd packed into a chic interior of three levels: French wines were poured downstairs, American wines on the ground-floor level, and Italian wines upstairs on the mezzanine overlooking the main floor. Wait staff scurried about and up and down stairs with samples from the new food menu.

The event had the feel of a festive happy-hour. Guests tasted the difference between the body of the Italian Chianti Classico with the dryness of the French Bordeaux, and we tasted the difference between the crisp fruitiness of an American white against the acidity of a French white.

We then enjoyed tasting them again with food.

Ivy's small-plates menu is like Italian-inspired New England comfort food. Think scallops; a "risotto" made from diced potato with crème frâiche, fresh parsley and herbs; a creamy and sophisticated mac and cheese; pork loin with figs and a mustard sauce; and, perhaps the most impressive dish of all, duck confit with gnocchi in a cinnamon-laced ragu.

The wine list follows suit of the familiar, with a twist. The focus is on "approachable, drinkable and affordable wines," each of which goes for $26 a bottle or $9 a glass. The bigger hit tonight than the wine, though, were the cocktails, especially an uber-popular Sangria.

Venturing back out into the chill and the wind of the evening was much more tolerable after the Sangria and after the wine. I could have turned and gone back inside, but I felt confident I would be returning soon enough.

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About the Author

Cathy Huyghe

Cathy Huyghe writes about drinking wine every day in the Boston area. She finds the quirky characters, the after-hours events, and the surprising stories that make up Boston's vibrant local wine scene. But no matter where she is, what she's doing, or who she's with, she mostly just wants to drink the stuff.

Her first restaurant gig was at Chez Panisse, when she knocked on the kitchen's back door and asked if she could work there. She's also worked for Jean-Pierre Vigato in Paris and Thomas Keller in Las Vegas. She went to graduate school at Harvard (twice), and her writing has run in Boston magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Edible Boston, and on Nevada Public Radio and Grist.org.