Cozy Cafe and Awesome Wine? Yes Please! - Ridgeback Cafe and Wines by Tomas Andrew Glase

There are days when my job of wine buyer definitely does not suck, indeed I would say its down right bad ass. Last Wednesday was one of these days. One of my distributors : (Amanda with Cavattapi) invited me to lunch to meet Thomas Andrew Glase of Balboa wines, he also makes wines for Beresan (I love all of these wines btw). We met at The Ridgeback Cafe on 65th and 5th on the back side of Phinney Ridge. The height of the lunch hour we had a little table in the back of this cozy cafe. I love Crepes. There are a bunch of things such as eggs etc I am not supposed to eat with my intolerance list in crepes, but when faced with so many delicious crepe options how can I not have a crepe?! I had the Phinney - Apple smoked bacon, roasted red bell peppers, tomato, caramelized onions, mozzarella cheese, spinach, egg. Topped with poblano sauce and crème fraiche.DELICIOUS! very generous in size, served with some tasty Roasted Potatoes. There were many savory and sweet crepes to choose from as well as waffles, sandwiches, and soup. The Owner Justin joined us at the table after whipping up our food and is one of the most charming people I've met in a while (and p.s. quite cute). I can hardly wait to go back.

Now let me talk about the wines of Thomas Andrew Glase:

 Beresan Carmenere is one of my top favorite wines, its delicious. Not tried Carmenere? Do it. Full of fruit and spice full bodied, awesome. Thomas designs this wine along with all the other tastiness that happens at Beresan. The Semillon is not only tasty but part of the proceeds go to the Angel Share Project which helps cancer research! We carry 3 Beresan wines presently at Kitchen N Things and all are worth trying.

 Balboas wine making practices are fantastic and so are their wines. They are incredibly earth friendly, what is not used is composted, American made glass, naturally dyed labels are used for packaging and they refrain from using foil. So far I've tried the Merlot (which we carry at Kitchen N Things) and they Syrah and the Mith, all are amazing. I will be getting more of his wines in the store soon.

Tom is also terribly nice and has now achieved wine maker crush status along with Mark McNeilly  (Mark Ryan Winery) Try both of their wines, seriously. They are heaven.

Sometimes things sound better than they end up being - Kushibar

Located near Open Circle Theatre and Rendevous is the Kushibar, having read the reviews on Yelp I thought ok, its cheap, and its supposed to be pretty good, its in a good location to these two theatres, which I on occasion frequent, I have 30 minutes, its "street food" lets see how they do.  Who doesn't love food on skewers?! especially when each skewer is between 2 and 5 dollars.  The best thing I have to say about the place is the free curry popcorn was quite tasty. The man who seated me seemed annoyed that I was just a party of 1 and sat me at the bar, I sat for several minutes waiting for someone to take note of me, and finally snagged the same man and gave him my order having already explained I was in a rush. I ordered the seafood set and a oyster mushroom skewer thinking, seafood should be especially fast. WRONG. It  took 20 minutes. Which if they were cutting things fresh and skewering them would be one thing, but at my vantage point at the bar I could see they pulled pre made skewers out of a drawer.  I should mention also that the restaurant was pretty well empty at this point, though they were expecting a couple of large parties that had not arrived yet.  When my food finally did arrive it was over cooked and bland. What a disappointment.
I made it to my play on time (barely) but will not be back to the Kushibar