Vegetarian Restaurant

Tonight was the start of "restaurant week" in Ann Arbor, and we decided to try out Seva, a veggie restaurant here in town. Now, typically, I find vegetarianism annoying and generally unpleasant, but I do think that some veggie cooking can be good, and this restaurant had a really innovative, well-aged wine list on their website. With a 3 course meal on a 2 for 1 deal with $25, this seemed a good idea. Well... the results were mixed, in my view.

The food itself was decent, even good. My spring roll was tasty, and Julie's cheese with honey and pistachios was downright amazing. We both had cheese-stuffed ravioli as our main, with a side salad of carrot and apple. The salad was good, with a nice ginger taste. The ravioli was OK, but rather lacking in flavor--it would've been amazing with a bit of pancetta on there. Both the sorbet and vanilla ice cream were a nice finish. So, decent points for food. Good, not great. And, the wine we ended up with, a 2002 Selbach-Oster Spatlese Riesling was well-aged, nicely made, and showing well. And, it was at a great price--only a couple bucks over retail. Indeed, the wine list attracted me to this restaurant more than anyting else--a bunch of older (5-20 year old) wines at really good prices.

Now, the problems begin. When we arrived, they had my name wrong on the reservation. Now, how hard is to spell "Lake"? OK, we figured that out. Then, I look at the menus, and they didn't bring out a wine list, only had the drink menu with "by the glass" wines. I asked the waitress for the wine list, which led her to point out the few "by the glass" wines. Now, this was not her fault in the least--she just had not been trained well enough to know this wine list existed. Bad restaurant management. Then, she finds it, brings it out, with a warning--the list may be a bit out of date, and they may not have everything. OK, that's horrible management--keep your damned menu up to date. So, we pick a bottle, which they don't have, but to the credit of the waitress, she suggests a different riesling (she called it a Weingut, which is equivalent to "Domaine" on a French wine, so again, crappy training) from the menu (but it was a 2006, a vintage I find lacking in complexity). Fortunately, there were 3 other rieslings on the "reserve" list, so I suggested they try that. Meanwhile, our apps hvae arrived. Now, the manager comes over with the two rieslings they could find--one of which was the spatlese we chose. Bizarrely, the wine goes back to the back for another five minutes until the waitress comes back with it and glasses. Again, just weird. Now, at the end of dinner, we had some wine left in the bottle--not a lot, not enough to take home, not enough to even get a mild buzz. So, I asked our waitress, who was a wonderfully friendly, attentive person, if she'd be interested in trying the wine, as I figured these probably didn't get opened real often. Knowledgeable staff would, presumably, make for a better sales staff, right? She was very interested, appreciative, but went to ask if it was OK. Apparently, this was seriously against the rules, and staff simply couldn't taste wine at work. So, what's the moral of the story? Great people working the floor, good food. And, at least tonight, the ability to show a complete lack of ability to manage a restaurant successfully. These guys advertise online a serious, aged, great value wine list. But they don't bother to do what they need to keep up the inventory, maintain an accurate list, or train their staff in what that wine is, or, for that matter, even anything about its existence. It's really a disappointment. I also am a bit amused at some of the list--there are 10 year old barolo, barbaresco, cabs, even a 20+ year old bordeaux. These are serious, great wines, and they're BIG. They go exceptionally beautifully with meat. I don't know that anything in the vegetarian menu works with that sort of wine. So, again, I'm not convinced that the management has thought through their list with their menu in mind, but my mind is open, and I'm impressed by the list still.