Best for: Italian tapas
Location: Downtown
Foodgasmic dish: Oven roasted lobster risotto, Pumpkin & sweet potato ravioli
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Oven roasted Maine lobster, served with risotto, asparagus, fresh Oregon porcini mushrooms, tarragon buerre blanc and smoked trout caviar. $19 |
On my first visit to Vino, Mizuki and I sat at the bar and ordered four dishes:
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| Seared sea scallops, w/ bacon-tomato takana ragout, kabayaki butter sauce & tobiko. $11 |
Our first dish was the seared sea scallops, served w/ bacon-tomato takana ragout with kabayaki butter sauce & tobiko. The scallops were cooked to perfection, and the dish came with two melt-in-your-mouth wafers that went well with the sauce.
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| Waialua roasted asparagus, served w/ roasted Hamakua mushrooms, local organic egg, shaved parmesan, & white truffle oil. $17 |
Our next dish was Waialua asparagus milanese, served w/ roasted hamakua mushrooms, local organic egg, shaved parmesan cheese and white truffle oil. As Mizuki told me, "It's all in the egg." Why isn't asparagus always served with egg?? The oven roasted Maine lobster was next, and it was served w/ risotto, asparagus, porcini mushrooms, tarragon buerre blanc and smoked trout caviar. Lobster and caviar - need I say more?
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Ravioli with sweet fennel sausage, baby spinach, ricotta cheese in a slow cooked Marinara sauce. $8 |
Our last dish was probably the least attractive, but still delicious. Sweet fennel sausage, spinach, and ricotta cheese ravioli, slow cooked in marinara sauce. By that time, we were so full and still planning on dessert (typical), so we had to pack most of it. Each dish was under $20, and some of the combinations of flavors were new to me.
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| Uhhh.. sure, I didn't finish my first glass yet, but YES I'll take another free glass - thanks! |
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| calamari, $7 |
On our second trip to Vino, the bartender remembered Mizuki and me immediately and said, "Uh-oh, here comes trouble." We had brought Jesse this time and ordered some drinks. I had a riesling, calamari w/ pepperoncini balsamic aioli, and the kabocha pumpkin and sweet potato ravioli with pesto marinated prawns, sliced almonds and sage brown butter. Not sure why I ordered the calamari; whenever I get it, I'm never really impressed. It's just fried squid after all. On the other hand, my ravioli was fantastic. The pumpkin flavor was subtle, and the shredded parmesan, pesto, and prawns went together beautifully.
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| It's not a real dinner unless my friend gets her mussels! "Nona Rose" Cioppino (mussels, clams, Dungeness crab, shrimp, chili flakes, and San Marzano tomato sauce), $22 |
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However, my favorite part about dinner had to be our bartender. It's moments like this that remind me why the bar is the best place to sit while dining out with your girlfriends. The bartender (I feel really ashamed that I still don't know his name) and I got into a pretty heated debate over politics and religion - you know, all those topics to avoid. Sometimes I forget how radical I am in Hawaii for being a socialist and atheist. He joked that I'm not allowed back in Vino until I read Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. "But we're still friends, right?" he asked. Sure. Capitalist.
Our bartender gave us four free glasses of wine (so I guess I forgive him) -- a dry white wine from some Mediterranean island that I didn't know existed to pair with my ravioli, and a moscato for dessert. Oh, moscato, you're still my favorite wine in the world.
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| Apparently I kept saying, "It looks like Christmas!" I must have been getting a little tipsy from all that wine |
