TAKE ONE Wine on Third is worth rooting for By Kevin Purdy; photos by kc kratt A wine on third highlight. Spinach and roast beet salad. Steamed Prince Edward Island mussels. Raised pork tenderloin with bacon and gouda potato gratin. Let’s just put this out there, first thing: Wine on Third is the type of restaurant you can’t help but root for. It’s a fine dining room and wine-and-tapas bar in the center of Niagara Fall’s sometimes rowdy Third Street bar district. It’s a local business that has stayed open and expanded, nothing to sneeze at in itself. But it's also headed by Kevin Robertson, a Falls native who trained at both Niagara County Community College and the Culinary Institute of America. More than anything, though, Wine on Third is ambitious—in its menu, its wine list, and its presentations. The tapas side of Wine on Third is an elongated barroom, with a wall-length booth, red and soft orange visual tones, and about a half-dozen tables. Its menu is an entirely different creature from that in the fine dining room. The wife and I arrived on a Friday night to find the bar invitingly bustling, with glass-in-hand conversations and little plates everywhere. Because we’d called ahead, though, we were escorted to a quiet, spacious dining room. The bar room and its food were never mentioned again. We were meek, but you should make a point of asking about ordering from either side. For what it’s worth, friends and former Niagara-area co-workers report good things about that tapas menu. More than one mentioned the sautéed lemon gnocchi, which isn’t a bashful dish, but goes great with a lower-acidity wine. There’s also a grilled ravioli, served with a parsley/caper/raisin pesto and a bit of mascarpone cheese, that quickly came to mind for some visitors. Back at our table, I was pleased to see lots of by-the-glass options. Yes, a bottle is a nice assurance of freshness and seriousness of intent. But a restaurant serving border-hoppers, adventurous casino visitors, and chow hounds from across the region does well to offer glasses. I started with a 2005 Martin Codax Rioja, looking for something not too heavy. Despite its youth, it carried a good bit of cherry, and maybe blackberry, fruit to the tongue. The wife ordered a lemon drop martini, which arrived in a flute glass and tasted a bit down. In the meantime, we sparred over the soft, moist, crusty bread served with oil, pesto, and balsamic reductions, and received that night’s complimentary tasting plates: three cucumbers topped with smoked salmon, drizzled with horseradish cream, and geometrically sectioned with three chive stalks and six capers. It seemed like a slow night in the dining room, but I wouldn’t complain if the kitchen wanted to send me cryptographic clues all night. We split steamed Prince Edward Island mussels and a spinach and roast beet salad for first courses. The mussels were inconsistent, but those social shells that fully opened picked up just a bit of earthy flavor from the tomato, fennel, and spinach puree at the bottom of their bowl. The spinach salad was more of a guilty pleasure than it seemed, topped with a sunny-side-up egg and lots of cracked pepper, with bacon flavor punched right into the leaves and beet slices. When you wanted a break from that mouth-coating wallop, you could pick up a nibble of goat cheese from the edges, or scrape up more pepper. Everything at Wine on Third seemed plated with purpose—not fashionable minimalism, but with thought into how you might enjoy using your fork. For entree, I chose a naturally raised pork tenderloin with bacon and gouda potato gratin and bourbon demi-glace. My wife, perhaps figuring she’d already shaken off sensibility, went in for the surf and turf special: cold water lobster tail with vanilla butter, six ounces of filet, and a twice-baked potato. For a wine refill, I pulled a trick I’d seen work wonders: asking for a “spicy red.” Just by asking with the vaguest intent, one forces the waiter to consider the whole list, and possibly avoids an up-sell of safe, boring reds. I received a 2006 La Puerta Bonarda Reserva from Argentina. It wasn’t quite spicy, but it tasted like it knew a guy who went to school with spicy, and felt full-bodied. That meat came to the table with two slices cut off, mounted to a cross-hashed potato crisp, leaning over the side of the tenderloin. The purpose? To make me take notice of the tender, still-glistening meat before I discovered how much compressed potato and gouda was waiting off to the side. The bourbon sauce was a bit underwhelming, sweet, and faintly reminiscent of campfire-type flavors, but a bit too quiet and not heading in any particular direction on the tongue. The plate was smoky all over, in fact—the Gouda, the sauce, the seared spices—but the applications varied enough to prevent sameness. Despite being ordered medium-rare, you could make my wife’s grill-marked filet fall to pieces just by thinking about the knife in your hand. That kind of give also allowed the crust’s peppery flavor to sink into the center when you bit down. The lobster tail and vanilla butter? They mostly came home in Styrofoam, because it was more fun to trade bites of potato sides. Hers didn’t really taste twice-baked, and was really a vessel for way too much cheese and cream. We are, however, suckers for that kind of thing. The waiter convinced us we had room left to split a Valentine’s-themed dessert special: a chocolate mousse crocante with a hazelnut shell and raspberry demi-glace. The corkscrew caramel spiral, whipped cream, and white chocolate hearts drizzled into the surrounding sauce weren’t really necessary, but, hey, you order a Valentine’s dessert special, you don’t get to complain about subtlety. The mousse itself was a dark chocolate delight, enough so that one felt guilty for dredging up too much rich raspberry sauce with the first bite. Wine on Third delivers, what my wife declared as the best meal she’s had in our joint review dinners. I’m holding back judgment, because I’m that type of guy. But I’ve decided that, in a town full of underdogs, this one has bona fides worth believing in. Kevin Purdy is a frequent food writer for Buffalo Spree. SUBSCRIBE NOW Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top