This summer the Vega Tapas Café is sponsoring “Tours of the Mediterranean” featuring specialties from a Mediterranean country each week. This week it’s France so PC and I checked it out last night. It was advertised as 5 courses for $25; add wine pairings for $15. We actually got six courses – all very small, tapas style – and three glasses of wine. It was delicious!

Here’s what we ate:
Pissaladière (onion & anchovy tart) with chicken live mousse and greens.

Salad with duck confit, dried cherries, and chevre.

Sea bass en papillote with potatoes, artichokes, brussel spouts, herbes de Provence in a beurre blanc sauce.

Coquilles St. Jacques – scallops – seared and served with white beans and smoked bacon in a lemon Dijon sauce

Steak Frites – with a demi-glace, served with French fries.

Crepes with chevre, apples, pears in a caramel brandy sauce.

The dishes got better as we went along and all in all, it was a wonderful meal, and a great deal. My only complaint was that the wine pairings were brought out at the same time at the beginning of the meal with no explanation whatsoever! I like to know why the chef/wine person chose a particular wine for a particular dish. But no matter, we experimented with all three throughout dinner. The wines were a Muscadet, a really good Minervois (Domaine du Vipur 2002, which I am going to look for now) and a Cotes de Catalenes 1998.

France continues for the rest of the week and they’re doing Spain next week. The regular tapas menu looks great, the space is nice with lots of interesting artwork for sale on the wall, and the service was very good.

My fiance (a certified sommelier with plenty of experience) and I decided to try this restaurant recently. He decided to order a glass of the Albarino with his seafood. Unfortunately, the bottled was "corked" so my fiance asked to have another glass from a different bottle. The owner came to the table and explained that the wine was not corked and that my finace did not know what he was talking about. He explained that he personally did not like the vintage and that he thought it was "tart". My finace explained that he had had this wine before and that what he was referring to had nothing to do with the taste, but rather with a substance called TCA that sometimes infiltrates the wine, giving it a "musty" flavor. He refused, at first to open another bottle (even though that was the only kind he wanted with his dinner)and began a tirade of how he has been doing this for eight years. Once my finace explained that he too knows what he was doing the owner hesitantly opened another bottle all the while demeaning my finace's knowledge. I am completely aghast at the way this man treats his customers. Although our food was good and the waitress even better, we will never return to this place and suggest others do not as well. There are plenty other wonderful places in this city that have owners who really know what they are doing.