On a frigid winter night, a man wearing two coats shuffles into a brightly lit brick restaurant in downtown Madrid. Staff greet him warmly; he’s been here many times. The maître d’ stamps his ID card, and the hungry man selects a table with a red tablecloth, under a big brass chandelier.
The man, Luis Gallardo, is homeless — and so are all the diners, every night, at the city’s Robin Hood restaurant. Its mission is to charge the rich and feed the poor. Paying customers at breakfast and lunch foot the bill for the restaurant to serve dinner to homeless people, free of charge.
It’s become Spain’s most sought-after lunch reservation. The restaurant has poached staff from luxury hotels. Celebrity chefs are lining up to cook once a week. For paying clients, the lunch is fully booked through the end of March.
The restaurant opened in early December, and is run by an 80-year-old Catholic priest, Ángel García Rodriguez, whom everyone knows simply as “Padre Ángel.”
Spain’s ‘Robin Hood Restaurant’ Charges The Rich And Feeds The Poor
W: While this restaurant never made it onto our list to visit, I wanted it to. I love the concept of vegan food, the creative ways people come up with replacing common ingredients like eggs and butter are awesome. At the same time I’m a big fan of meat, especially meat that is not the usual cut, meat that a butcher may recommend if you spend some time talking to them.
One of the things that I’m increasingly coming across in the restaurants that separate the ok from the good from the great is the idea of portions. Don’t get me wrong, it’s ok to do tapas style, small plates with a lot of things. What’s not ok is to charge a lot for those little plates.
Even less ok is to avoid any mention of Tapas style cooking and charge the same as you would for a main at a regular restaurant. This was my problem with The Butcher and The Vegan. The portion sizes were tiny. In a city with a well known taco joint that charges $15 for three tacos of choice that are overflowing you can’t charge $18 for measly tacos. You can’t top the price I was charged for a beautiful steak at a more well known restaurant with a nicer wine list and give me less food.
While the staff was friendly, the food relatively prompt to arrive, and the wine good, I would have left hungry. If the steak couldn’t be more substantial due to costs then the side should have made up for it. I would have been more than comfortable with a plate heaped with veggies. The place has Vegan in the name, I halfway expected it. Sadly I was disappointed.
If they weren’t so far apart I might suggest apps at Berkeley North and dinner here, sadly so far apart neither can fill the other’s gaps.
W: For someone who seems to obsess about wine as much as I do, I also experience my fair share of student guilt. I don’t read as much about wine as others do (or say that they do?). I can’t keep up with all the fantastic things shared on The Terroirist, I’ve received numerous wine books as gifts, and I mainly only opened them when researching projects for school.
Don’t get me wrong, it was nice to have my own personal library to reference when working on papers, but it was interesting when it came time to pair things down recently. Beyond the Wine Bible and those books by Jancis Robinson I wasn’t sure what I should hang onto. As well I’m hoping to start WSET Level 4 this summer, the diploma level.
So I’m starting today with reading the Wine Bible (not the current edition, but the only edition I own) in an attempt to refresh everything I’ve learned and forgotten these past few years. And I really enjoy how it opens with “One of the most insidious myths in American wine culture is that a wine is good if you like it. Liking a wine has nothing to do with whether it is good. Liking a wine has to do with liking that wine, period.”
Is this the sort of concept I’m going to be running into more and more often? I suspect as much. It’s like the concept of Atlantis, the idea of it has been debunked for years, but outside those who do a little research the myth still pervades pop culture. This book was published in 2001, putting it over 10 years old. Wine culture has existed in some form or another since ancient Rome.
W: If I had to recommend a podcast about wine, I’d go with this one. While the host obviously loves wine, his background in radio makes it much easier to approach than other less polished interviewers.
We enjoyed this wine almost two months ago now, I simply forgot to upload my thoughts. The wine is still avaliable in some LCBOs, and now for $6 less than what M & I paid for it. Enjoy.
W: This wine was one we bought on a whim, proving that the label really does matter sometimes. We were in the LCBO aiming to pick a wine for dinner when M found this bottle and said even if it wasn’t what we’d serve at dinner she wanted to get it because it sounded so cool. Cut to a week later and we finally opened the bloody bottle.
Fresh in the glass it gave off some aromas of smoke, dried tobacco, and black fruit. It had a remarkable acidity considering it is from Argentina and most wines I’ve had from South America have been lacking in this attribute. That being said, it did still burn a bit on the way down suggesting a higher alcohol (or too much pizza for me today).
After sitting out for a few hours the smoke and tobacco aromas have disappeared while the red fruit has taken a far more prominent role, dominating anything else that seems to come up. There is a hint of leather on the back end but not much else. This is reflective of the palate as well, with not a lot of flavor left, but there is still that strong acid backbone and enough tannin to provide pleasant structure.
While i wouldn’t drink it by itself after sitting out for two hours I am impressed that it could still pair nicely with the right food, like the pizza we were enjoying it with earlier. (It should be noted that M finished the bottle a couple days later, and enjoyed it still.)
I’ve visited a lot of wineries since moving to Niagara. Nearly all of the ones located in Niagara on the Lake and more than half of those in and around Beamsville. In that time I’ve developed my favorites, recommended them to people over and over, and dragged friends out to see them.
The flipside being that I’ve also found the wineries I probably won’t ever recommend. This is usually unfortunately due to the quality of the wine, or the price. I won’t recommend the winery where every single wine tastes sweet. I won’t recommend the winery that served a flavorless oxidized pinot gris. I damn sure am not going to recommend the winery that doesn’t have a decent wine for under $100 and wont let you taste any of their higher end wines. Rare though is the place that makes me hesitant to recommend it based on the service that you get there.
Generally speaking the people who work in wineries want to be there. It’s a seasonal industry that rarely manages to pay enough to do more than cover your bills. People work in it for the perks, for getting wine from their winery, for bonuses and commission, for industry tastings and events, to network, or because they are that special breed of extrovert who needs to talk to others all day. Even the introverts in this industry can still provide good service, usually by simply being open and upfront about the type of experience that they can offer you.
As one of my first mentors mentioned “You don’t have to work hard in this industry for people to have a good time. You’re giving them wine.” This all comes together to make the terrible experience that I had at Hidden Bench all the more surprising.
When we arrived their closed sign was up, but a quick Google said they should be open. We decided to pop in and have a peek, figuring that if they were closed everything would be locked up and we’d just have to come back another day.
They were open, it turned out that they were planning to update their website and need to hold some photo shoots. Given the size of their space it made sense to discourage customers, and we offered to leave if they’d prefer. We had the luck to arrive when they had finished in the tasting bar and were moving on to production.
We moved to the side of the tasting bar away from the door, out of the way of the photographers and started to look at their list. This was difficult as their tasting bar had every available space covered by glasses, and their list was difficult to read through them. We were told that we could try 4 wines for $10 and if we bought three then the tasting fee would be waved. This is one of the highest tasting fees I’ve seen, but it is an organic small out of the way winery.
Given that we’d be sharing one tasting since we were tired and relatively broke I want to take the time to look over their list. They had a number of Rieslings, which is one of my favorite grapes (due no doubt to a teacher I had and living in Niagara) as well as a Meritage white blend, some Chardonnays, and a number of Pinot Noirs (a variety that I’m trying to focus more on as great versions can be some of my favorite wines).
I barely had a chance to note this without reading anything more about the wines, and M didn’t even get to be so lucky before the sales associate asked us what we like. We glanced at each other before I gave the stock answer that we usually provide, we tend to like everything, given that we’re in the industry there isn’t much we don’t like. I then point out where we each work.
Her response was to rapidly point to four wines and say that those were her recommendations. I said thanks, and proceeded to try to read the list again, thinking to myself it was a shame that she didn’t recommend the white Meritage blend because I was very curious. I barely got through reading the description of the first Riesling before she asked if she could get us anything and informed us that everything might not be available.
I then asked oh, which wines were available for us to try. She pointed out the four that she’d recommended. Why she gave us a list and didn’t start with they only had four wines we could try, I don’t know. We got to try their estate Riesling, Chard, Pinot, and a Pinot where all the grapes came from one vineyard. Not the Meritage blend. Not a number of Pinots, the grape I am curious about, not even multiple Rieslings.
The Riesling was nice, light, balanced, not overly complex with mainly citrus and other fruit character. I commented to her that it seemed to me to be just edging into off-dry territory. She responded that it was about 12 grams of sugar per litre so not very. According to most classes I’ve taken wines qualify for off-dry if they have more than 8.
Next the Chard, we were informed it was aged in a combination of new and two year old french oak. From that description I was expecting something reasonably rounded but still with good acidity considering the locations of their vineyards. I hoped for a combination of fruit and spice that can be created in young Niagara Chardonnays. Instead this wine reminded me of oak flavors and water. No real acidity to it, no real flavor beyond weak oak. A heavily oaked wine would have been preferred. M confirmed this for me later when we were in the car, she had blamed the lack of flavor on a cold she was getting over. I suspect that it was due to the Riesling overpowering any flavor left in it.
The estate Pinot we agreed smelled like chocolate, though when I looked through the tasting note provided all I saw were references to ripe red fruits. The nose proved particularly disappointing when I had a sip. Rather than that lovely chocolate aroma, or the red fruit advertised, I got short sour cherry that vanished in a wine so short it couldn’t get on a kiddy ride.
I honestly can’t remember what I thought of the last wine beyond being disappointed. I do remember that I went straight back to the Riesling and finished it off. M asked me what I thought and I replied that the Riesling was my favorite, which made sense as I’ve been increasingly fond of the grape recently. M asked if I’d like to get a bottle, and I responded, I don’t want to but if you’d like to go ahead.
She purchased the bottle, and we made our rapid escape. Honestly everyone else we met there was welcoming and encouraging. From the photo crew to the gentleman who greeted us as we headed back to the car. Though the wines tasted... poorly, lets go with poorly, the bottles were also almost empty. We went on a Tuesday, suggesting that those bottles had been opened either Saturday or Sunday. They could have been much nicer fresh, probably would have been, and should have been dumped at the start of the day.
Hidden Bench falls into a special category for me, while I certainly wouldn’t recommend going, if this has peaked your interest. If you seek out organic wines. If you’ve got money to burn, then go check it out. That being said unless you really feel that you must visit every winery you’d probably be safe in giving it a skip.
M:Where to start with this place besides it is a chain restaurant. I'm not knocking that, the food must at least be decent. My favourite part of the whole place was the lighting which is all cool hipster light bulbs.
W: Ya, we don't often go to chain restaurants unless we don't really have much choice. You compared it to Turtle Jacks when I was asking what it was like. That wasn't very helpful BTW (never been to one of those either).
M: I had a gift card, sue me. We ordered drinks from the bar, which were good. Which made me hopeful that the rest of dinner would also be good. I was wrong, maybe for you it was okay but the server was quite rude to me. Not filling my water glass but refilling yours multiple times. Walking right passed our table when we clearly needed something. Ugh!
W: Wow, you really don't want to write about this! OK... So the place looked nice, kinda like what somewhere pretending to be an upscale restaurant would. They had nice lighting, stone and wood everywhere, and were so fucking crowded. They asked us where we wanted to sit when we first arrived, and we said it didn't matter. Rather than take us to a table in the least busiest section she broke it down to questions, so I ended up picking our table, a high top in the bar near the server station. I figured less walking for our server would mean better service. I was wrong.
M: Soooo wrong, though to be fair our server had a huge section. The fact that she was clearing tables when there was no one waiting for those tables and we needed something was all on her though.
W: Exactly. I was more than ready to forgive stuff like a wait for food or drinks, but there was a point mid meal where it crossed the line from a busy restaurant with overworked staff into just terrible service. Do you want to tell it?
M: I'm so done with this place, go for it tell it.
W: So at this point the bartender has brought us our drinks, which were nice, we've got our food, which I was impressed by, and we were enjoying it. I've finished two glasses of water at this point and am not particularly thirsty. I look at M and see that her water glass is empty. I jokingly ask "thirsty?" she nods, I swap our glasses and say "watch, they care if my glass is empty." A minute or two later our server drops by to fill "my" empty glass, ignoring M's now empty glass.
M: Which is ridiculous, how can you only see one empty glass? You can't, you chose not to fill the other... bullshit.
W: And that would have been bad enough, but when it came time to pay the check we waited a good 20 minutes from setting the gift card in the little booklet thingie to her taking it, paying our balance and bringing it back. This was a problem because by this point neither of us wanted to come back. It was insane that not only were they only giving water to one of us, but also that the bartender and the guy who we assumed was the sommelier were standing near our table all night and did nothing to help our server. So we were planning on tipping the remaining balance of the gift card, which would have been $27 on a $72 cheque. That's 37.5% for those of you missing a calculator. Instead we were stuck searching for cash to leave anything. And now we still have to go back at some point cause there is still a balance on the gift card!
M: You can bet we will be sitting at the bar and ordering drinks with that gift card.
W: Tonight’s projects include enjoying a beautiful Gewürztraminer and making rosemary infused olive oil. Super simple, clean up some rosemary and dump olive oil on it.
The gewurztraminer is perhaps a little more complex. With acidity that sits on the high end of the middle (meaning not lots of acidity, but a fair amount) and a medium body it fills out the mouth quite nicely. It lacks the soapy texture that I dread, instead opting more for something that seems to resemble a chardonnay that’s had some oak contact. All of the light tasting florals and lychee flavors are there, providing layers upon layers of character to examine. The fruit comes across as perfectly ripe, rather than over or underripe as many Niagara wines can.
But really, the best part of this wine is the nose. It’s so easily recognizable as gewurz that I almost flinch. The floral comes through with none of the fruit, leaving that pleasant surprise for your palate. I expect that soapy texture every single time I smell it and am pleasantly surprised over and over again.
All in all a fantastic offering from Creekside in their Undercurrent label.
W: Here it is, M’s future home, Berkeley North. Note there is no other dining space, and you can see right back into the kitchen. I think it might function more as an expensive wine cafe for me in the future. I can see myself writing while sitting at the bar.
W: Berkeley North... What a weird place. I don't think I've ever simultaneously enjoyed and disliked something so much at the same time.
M: I don't have the contradictory opinion that you have. I enjoyed Berkeley North, it was such an interesting place. We got to try so many more things because of the shareable plates. I like that in a restaurant...probably because I'm terrible at making decisions.
W: That's fair, and I liked the sharing too. I'd probably be less upset with the place if I'd read the website beforehand. Silly me assuming we could get two mains at the place and a few glasses of wine. Instead we go in and find out that everything is deliberately small portion (which admittedly it says on their website that I didn't read beforehand) and sadly not as filling as I'd hoped.
M: To be fair you could eat a horse and still be hungry. I am in love with their polenta fries, they were fantastic and I keep having vivid dreams about them. Also the fact that the wine I had paired so well with every dish we ordered, they have my respect for that.
W: True, the wine pairing was spectacular. They kept everything to a relatively small list, which is made even smaller by some things not being available by the glass. And all of this would have been fine if our server had actually known about the wines on the list.
M: Yes, I agree with you there. She didn't know what she was talking about when it came to the wine and that was quite evident. What I didn't like was that she wouldn't bring over the dessert menu when we asked for it. She just told us what the desserts were... that's great but I also wanted a whiskey.
W: And I was planning to order some sort of dessert wine or cocktail. That was a fairly big deal to me, and why I wanted to look at it. Instead she just recited the desserts off to us and then loomed there waiting for our order. It put pressure on us to pick something rather than having the option to decide to go elsewhere.
M: Everything about the restaurant I enjoyed but it would have been a thousand times better if we had a different server. They have just started to do brunch and I very much would like to go back and see what it is like without that server.
W: That I'd agree to, though I prefer the idea of it as a sort of starting point, where we can do some restaurant hopping and just get appetizers there. Also, the portions are still too small.
M: Cry me a river about the portion size, I've seen you eat four sandwiches in under a minute. I would be down for restaurant hopping though!
W: That's a lie. I eat fast but not that fast. My problem with the portion sizes is more that we could realistically only do a group of four there. Any more and we end up splitting something. Would you really be ok with half of an edamame dumpling?
M: I see your point. bigger portion sizes would be a benefit. I loved the wine, I really did, I would have loved it even more if the little jug it came in was not unceremoniously dumped into a dirty wine glass.
W: I really didn't like our server. I'm sure part of that came from her probably (I hope) being new at the job, but when my wine glass was easy to see through, and yours was streaked grey and she DIDN'T NOTICE they might have a problem. I also agree that the dumping the wine in wasn't nice. I would have liked to see the label on the bottle, or been able to control how much was in the glass at a time. I especially would have liked her to be able to offer more about the Niagara Pinot Noir other than that the winery was in Niagara (which it wasn't).
M: So really most of our angst comes from the server. The building was beautiful though. It had a brick wall, a really cool bar and super high ceilings... so pretty much everything I want in my house.
W: I wouldn't want to be in that space when it gets busy though. It seemed a little tightly packed which would only get worse. All in all I'd encourage people to check it out, but research it first, and get your main somewhere else.
M: Meh, I unlike grumpy pants say go and get dinner see what you think. After all most people are not bottomless pits, though I do suggest to go in small groups, so that you don't get half an edamame dumpling.
M: I knew that Toast was a new wine bar in Hamilton. That was pretty much it. Oh and the fact that some of the wine from the winery I work at is sold there.
W: M decided that she wanted to go there for her birthday. Her big sister had given her a gift card and she was curious about it. From the street it looked quite nice, at little eclectic, like a hipster coffee bar where the chairs don't match and they keep a couple of board games in the corner.
M: oh did I mention it used to be a martini bar called the moulin rouge. It had remnants of that decor.
W: Maybe that's where the chandelier came from. Unfortunately the tables and chairs didn't quite match the rest of the decor. They looked like they were fresh from a recently closed school.
M: Hey, maybe that's the vibe they were going for... You don't know Mister Judgey Pants. They wine however was fantastic and the service wasn't too shabby either.
W: That's true. The decor was my only gripe, which is rare. The wine selection was great, and I loved that we got the option to order a flight of wines too, since there was so little there we were familiar with.
M: I enjoyed the fact that the wine list wasn't just Ontario wines, it gets boring after awhile. My favourite was definitely their meat and cheese board. It had so many cool things: Elk, Water buffalo, homemade jams and mustard and sooo much cheese!
W: Agreed! The food was fantastic, and it was hard to find a bad pairing. Plus I finally got you to admit that you liked blue cheese! And mustard! Though I don't know if our service would have been quite so good if we hadn't chose to sit at the bar.
M: I guess blue cheese isn't that bad. I admit that maybe our service wouldn't have been as great if we didn't sit at the bar but that's the perks of going out for drinks with someone who works in the industry... you know just where to sit to get the desired attention. Overall, I really enjoyed Toast and would highly recommend going, though I would be interested to see how often their wine list changes.
W: Me too, one of my favorite places in the area. I wish it was less expensive but sadly you can't have everything.
Two twenty-somethings (one closer to thirty-something than the other) who work with wine and food offering opinions on the food, wine, beer and other beverages in Hamilton and Niagara.
M grew up in a family that enjoys wine and food with nearly every occasion. She’s completed a graduate program about wines and winery management. She works in the local wine industry and has helped to operate a seasonal bistro.
W grew up never really trying wine until he studied winemaking and viticulture. W then chose to complete the WSET levels 2 and 3 with wine and level 2 with spirits. He has worked in a number of restaurants in both back and front of house.
We both will be offering our opinions on bars, restaurants and other offerings in the Hamilton and Niagara area.
