Brix Wine Cafe

Last Thursday, my wife and I went to Brix Wine Cafe in the Juanita area of Kirkland. We called ahead to see if we can make reservations and were told they don't take reservations because there were plenty of tables.

We were a little taken a back by that since we usually find the good places tend to be busy. For example, the Purple tends to be busy all week.

Nonetheless, we knew the restaurant was pretty new and we had read some reviews on the web that made it sound like it was pretty good. There are reports that the Chef is Tom Black from Barking Frog however the web site and the menu indicate that the Executive Chef is Craig Stout with no mention of Tom Black. We don't care about who's in the kitchen as long as the food is good, just a point of interest.

Drove over there and parked, I had read that some people have worried about parking in Juanita village however I noticed that on our bill, it said that if you get a ticket while eating, Brix will cover it. Nice touch - I'd check into it with the restaurant before counting on that though.

The decor was good, trendy, nice display of wine bottles, and we took a seat in a booth close to the Windows. There were plenty of tables however the bar was pretty busy. It seemed like although they weren't packed with a lineup out the door, there was a steady stream of customers and the bar stayed full for the duration of our stay. (might be a good time to check this place out as it could get busier soon)

They have wine flights and we got the flight of Oregon wine which included A to Z Wineworks, Cherry Hill and Westrey, all Willamette Valley Pinot Noires.

The flight came to us in these mini glasses. I always wonder about this, wine really tastes bad in small, thick rimmed glasses. You can't get the bouquet off the wine which totally changes the experience. I'm always shocked when wineries trying to sell wine from tastings use crappy glasses. I understand there is an expense and for flights, big glasses make it look like you aren't getting much of a pour but still.

We asked for bigger Burgundy glasses and the waitress was nice enough to oblige even though she brought us bordeaux glasses. They were full sized glasses though, good enough.

The Cherry Hill tickeled our fancy the most although none were the kind of wine we'd run out and buy, mainly because they all seemed to either lack some complexity or were a little off balance. Good to drink and try however.

We then had a couple of glasses of the Fontanafredda Briccotondo Barbera which was quite good, easy to drink and enjoy.

The food (my wife had the Ahi Tuna special, I had the Pappardelle Pasta was pretty good, a little rich for our liking but definitely well prepared. We also had a cheese plate which was quite good but would have benefitted from a better selection of crackers/bread to go along with it.

The wine menu had a fair number of Washington wines along with a selection of Italian wines. We really missed having a selection of French wines to go through.

We also would have liked to be able to make a custom flight from the list of by the glass reds (we do this when we get the opportunity at other places).

Net/net for us was that we would go back but we wouldn't go out of our way to go back or plan to go back. We expected a little more refinement such as a better presentation of the flights, a full table of cutlery (we had only 1 fork and 1 knife), cheese knife for the cheese plate and such. Service was good though, there was just a bit of a feeling of a startup.