Secco Wine Bar Review

I didn’t want to use the star rating system when I took this job last year. How can a reviewer dilute a restaurant’s efforts, ideas and execution down to a number between one and four? What does one star mean? That the restaurant is of the paper-napkin-individual-creamers-plunked-on-the-table mindset, capable of tasty, sloppy burgers, but lacking professional service and polished décor? Or does one star mean that the kitchen is dirty, the servers churlish, the flowers cobweb-covered plastic, and no one, outside of Channel 12’s Restaurant Report, should cross its threshold? What one star meant required a lot of thought.

After considering the star system, I decided it worked for this site. Star ratings communicate information quickly. On-line sites are for the fleet footed and light skirted. On-line information is usually read and processed like check-out line periodicals, while doing something else. But, the thought put into an online food review isn’t hurried, at least it isn’t here.

For my rating system, I created a grid with 65 points, covering simple courtesies, such as the length of time it takes for a server to make eye contact with new tables, to whether or not the cooks serve food at the correct temperature (hot foods hot, cold foods cold), to how clean the bathrooms and window treatments are. Fancy things, like table crumbers, are not on the grid at all, but serve as extra credit, either for or against the server who sweeps up recalcitrant crumbs from tabletops. To earn just one star, the restaurant must hit 40 points on the grid. One star doesn’t mean the place is a hole, but rather, that it needs a little TLC. Two-star restaurants (55 points) are ones I would go back to. Three-star spots (60 points) are worth seeking out and four stars means the food, service and décor meet and exceed the owner’s intentions and the diner’s expectations. I don’t give out four stars often. In fact, I’ve only done it once in over a year.

Four-star places (65+ points) need not brandish crumbers over starched linen, serve sweetbreads with a choice of VSOP or XO or have a sommelier on the payroll. They do need to be the best at what they do. Or, what they are trying to do. Four-star restaurants have lifeblood. They are vibrant. They demand return. More important, they need to be better than 98 percent of the other places in town. They need to be a place I want to squire out-of-towners. Secco is a four-star restaurant.

Secco is a lot of things. It’s a style of painting on dried plaster, as in the changing mural behind the bar by the artist, Chris Milk. It’s a style of singing, with minimal accompaniment, as in the food that comes from the kitchen. It’s a style of wine, Italian, usually, and dry, definitely, like the fermented-to-dry, sparkling Loire they pour by the glass. In this Carytown extension of the River City Cellars wine shop, Secco’s mission, according the restaurant, “is to dispel the somewhat unsavory impression most Americans have of wine bars: No stingy pours of supermarket-grade vino with shocking markups. No staring at your bill thinking ‘did I eat those olives or put them through college?’”

To this end, Secco is a stunner. A light, three-course lunch can be had for $10 if you order from the Chinese-restaurant-style menu card—order one item from group A, one item from group B, etc.
 A three-course dinner of duck confit ($10), tartare of Spanish mackerel ($10) and mint cannelloni with braised lamb and pecorino sauce ($12) is about 30 meaty bones. You won’t leave hungry or poor, but you might leave with a to-go box.

When you arrive, try the fried gorgonzola-stuffed castelvetrano olives ($7), with a glass of 2008 “Nouveau Nez” Petillant Naturale from Grange Tiphaine, a natural wine without added yeast or sugar. This combo tastes like Rainier cherries having a birthday party with gorgonzola icing, a pleasing balance of rich, sweet, sour, fruity and a dash of the crazy.

In the afternoon, should you want a snack, there are dry-cured meats, salami plates and cheese plates, available from $5-$21. The charcuterie and cheese at Secco are sampled from a slow selection. “Slow” as in small production or family farmed, no industrial cheese, no Hickory Farms. And, no one will look at you funny if it’s before the official cocktail hour in Richmond, 5 p.m., if you order wine. After all, wine goes with food, you’re in a wine bar, and in Italy, the birthplace of the wine bar, the social hour begins at 11 a.m., just as the cappuccino hour comes to a close. Secco bows a lot to Italy in food and wine selections. The wine list is pages and pages of some of my favorite Italian producers, such as the curmudgeonly Paolo Bea, a maker of powdery, rich red wine that I rarely see on local lists.

Before you think this one of those boring bite-by-bite, gushing nouveau gourmand treatises about wines you can’t find or ingredients only available to restaurants, written by someone who just hauled home a ceramic egg grill to the tune of $600, let me get to the meat of my experiences.

The food is simple, made of good quality ingredients and thoughtfully prepared. Ditto that for the wine list. For that matter, I can say the same about the décor, the music and the service at Secco. It’s simple. For me, really good and really simple are the highest praise. That, and meets and exceeds expectations, which this bistro does. Secco averaged a whopping 68 points on three visits. And I dare you to find anyone there using a crumber.

Secco ****

2933 W. Cary St.

(804) 355-1375

What’s in the Stars:

0—don’t go

*-average

** above average

*** very good

**** excellent dining experience

Imagine learning to process caviar in Russia after a childhood of Cup-a-Soup. Needless to say, Varmit Pickeral was inspired. Thus began 20 years of restaurant gypsy-hood, beginning with Varmit’s first job as a dishwasher in an institutional kitchen and then trying out most any job Varmit could get in the hospitality industry, including; NC BBQ pit line-cook, cheese steward at Artisanal in Manhattan, grape picker, and specialty buyer for Balducci’s Food Lover’s Market in Northern Virginia.