The Wine Bistro

I was impressed with this place and it takes a lot to impress me. The Cajun shrimp and citrus risotto was fabulous! My boyfriend loves the short rib and mushroom risotto. Hummus trio appetizer was tasty. Both times I’ve been here, wonderful service-​really friendly. Tomato soup, crab cakes, and the chop chop salad were also delicious. If you enjoy a good White Russian, give the espresso White Russian a shot, it was great. And be sure to try the Mediterranean popcorn!

The place was pretty good and hopefully I’m able to get back to sampling their menu. For the wine enthusiast this place is your ticket to some really interesting selections as you can walk around and view their extensive array of all types of wines, pick one out, bring it back to your table and your server will be open it for you. The food was very good as we all took something different and I chose the Chicken Saltimbocca (boneless chicken breast seared with prosciutto and fresh sage, white wine, butter. Grilled asparagus, Asiago au gratin potatoes). I tried their Maple Bourbon Bread pudding which I thought was good, they could’ve done without the ice cream and simply used a nice Maple Bourbon sauce and kept it traditional of sorts.

The total experience was exemplary! Just an overall foodies dream. Great service, wonderful food. look at the pictures. enough said

For the most part, a good experience. My dad and stepmom (a wine lover) were in town for a visit. It was an OSU home game day and we wanted to pick somewhere that wouldn’t be overrun with fans, as they are from out of state and aren’t football fans. The Wine Bistro was a great place for that, as it was empty.
Nice ambiance here. We sat on the patio, which is a lovely space, and the inside is charming as well. Our lunch was excellent. I had shrimp risotto, which was delicious, and others at my table had salads (which looked excellent – big hunks of blue cheese make me happy) and a crabcake sandwich. Good reviews from everyone. We split the truffle mushroom appetizer and it was great.
The wine was fine. I don’t have much to say about it, as I’m a beer drinker and know little of wine, but it passed my wine snob mother in law’s test, so it was probably pretty solid.
My only complaints are about the service of the wine. My wife and I both had flights, so six wine glasses total. Of those six, three of them noticeably had cork floating in them and one had A SHARD OF GLASS. The cork is kind of bad, as I don’t expect that from a place that specializes in serving wine, and the glass is really bad. My wife could have been hurt if she hadn’t noticed it. It seems fairly careless to serve wine with things floating in it, especially with white wine, where you can see the things pretty clearly. Aside from that, though, we had a nice time and would go back.

Romance, retail wine bottles for sale that you can open during dinner and amazing italian food. done.

I split the Rustic Antipasto Platter with my husband, and we each had a bowl of French Onion Soup. The platter was a classic «nosh plate» of Asiago cheese, Boursin cheese, salami, grilled country sausage, pepperoni, fire roasted caper peppers, roasted garlic, mixed olives.
In spite of our desire to try it this restaurant, neither of us are big fans of wine. My husband was very pleased to find that they also offer a nice selection of beer. I ordered a sangria, which is my favorite way to disguise wine. It was very good.
The French Onion Soup had a Provolone and Parmesan crusted top crostini. It was absolutely heavenly! Dessert was Port Wine Soaked Cherry Cheesecake: Vanilla bean bourbon whipped cream cheese, graham cracker crust, warm port soaked cherries. Yum!
We will be back. All of the food exceeded our expectations.

Great place for fine dining!
beautiful ambiance and good food. Went there on Valentines Day and had a great evening. They had a great fish special dish for V-​Day which was really nice.

Let’s get to it:
FOOD: Good, but not great. This was the most lackluster of my experience. Had the Roasted Chicken Marsala. The flavors were good, but texturally, it was a disaster. The chicken skin, was so flabby and unappetizing. The risotto cake, was worse than I expected, frankly just not good.
WINE: Awesome. Decent wine menu and prices. My biggest criticism here is that they should cater their wine list to the dishes being served. Many of them don’t pair well in my opinion. A few dishes will pair with 5+ of the wines, but other dishes, you will find it more difficult to find a pairing from their short menu. You can also of course purchase anything from their bottle shop and drink it there. They have a corkage fee, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Charging a corkage fee for a bottle brought from home, makes sense. But charging for something you buy from their shop, is silly.
SERVICE: Excellent. This is where they shined. ’nuff said.
AMBIANCE: Great. I think it’s a beautiful restaurant and well designed for the most part.
Would I return? Maybe. I just hope all the food doesn’t leave me wanting more like my last experience did.

Let me start by saying that I have had *exceptionally* good experiences with the Wine Bistro in Clintonville, so tonight’s experience was completely unexpected.
We decided to hit up the Lane Ave location because it’s a blizzard out there and we thought the drive would be easier. It’s our first dateaversary so we were willing to face the weather in order to get the waived corkage fee and hopefully some gourmet eats.
It was unsurprisingly quiet in the restaurant so we were seated immediately. When our server came up, she asked about getting us some wine but we knew the drill (if you don’t, you get to pick your own bottle and it’s fantastic). After she explained how the layout of the wine racks worked, my boyfriend quickly asked about making vegetarian versions of any of the items on the menu. The Wine Bistro is decidedly NOT veg friendly, but the Clintonville location had enthusiastically worked with us before to get something amazing from their menu choices. The server simply said, «Hmmm. No.» I was floored. She was so curt about it.
After a few minutes of considering it, we decided we’d just leave rather than ordering the only option on the menu that would work, which we didn’t really want. So we went back out into the snow and frantically tried to find another place nearby. The weather was just too awful to justify driving around for a place so, eventually, we just went home. We’re now cooking our dateaversary dinner at home. I had planned this two weeks ago and didn’t dream that we’d be essentially told that the idea of not putting meat in something was unthinkable.
We’ll probably go back to the Clintonville location and I hope the owners do consider adding another vegetarian option or two to the menu, but Lane ave Wine Bistro will not see our faces again.

So from what I can tell, there are 2 similarly named chain wine bistros in Columbus. One is named The Wine Bistro (Upper Arlington, Clintonville, Worthington, Westerville), and then there’s The Wine Guy Bistro (Gahanna, New Albany, Pickerington.) I’ve been to both, and can say with confidence that The Wine Bistro is superior to The Wine Guy Bistro.
First, the ambience. The Wine Bistro in Upper Arlington has more of a warm, cozy, classy décor which I prefer to The Wine Guy’s post-​modern look in Gahanna. I also appreciate their patio seating during warm weather months.
Second, the food. The food here in general is tastier, and better suited to a wine tasting in my opinion. On my most recent visit, we had an order of the cheese platter, the antipasto platter, butcher’s choice, and chicken pesto flatbread. The butcher’s choice hanger steak was phenomenal. While I love seafood, the Wine Guy’s menu is too seafood-​heavy, which really limits my options when I want to do a flight of red wine. (Red wine and seafood is probably the worst food-​drink pairing known to mankind, in my opinion.)
The one thing that this place could do better, I think, is to offer a wider variety of wine flights.

Wine — The flights were extremely well priced and generous with pours. The glasses also seemed heavy handed which of course I appreciated. I also appreciated that you could buy bottles at a not insanely marked up price.
Food — The popcorn was stupid delicious and addictive. The fondue trio was decent and the waitstaff brought us more bread which was unexpected and nice.
Ambiance — I really wish they had more casual places to sit and just relax with a glass and snacks. It’s set up more as a full scale restaurant — which they are… but I think they could get even more people in if they tweaked they layout a little.
I’ll likely go back next time I’m in Columbus.
Be Awesome ~ chase

So sorry I didn’t take any pictures of the lovely dishes we sampled as they were quite tasty.
Went for a post OSU grad dinner with family. There was a nice size group of us and we tried a bunch of apps.
Hummus trio was fab, 3 cheese platter with fruit was pretty good. The blue was quite tasty. There was a mushroom dish that went around that looked good. Strawberry pistachio salad was very nice, flat breads looked large and flavorful.
I think most everyone enjoyed their wine and meals.
I didn’t quite understand the salt and pepper popcorn app thing and I was sad for my kids who got no choices in beverages at all. They carry no juice or lemonade only cola/​sprite and my kids don’t drink soda.
They drank water and lived :) but juice/​lemonade would have been a nice treat for this special occasion.
I would definitely go back again.
Lots of good veggie choices for me and plenty to choose from for all the others.

Great place to come with a friend or a date. I’m a fan of the wine flights (four different combination options — two white and two red — each with three 2oz samples for about $ 13). Richly appointed, comfortable ambiance, and good service. The food selection is decent, but I do wish they some healthier options on the menu (for example, this is one of those places where none of the ‘salads’ appear to have any vegetables in them).

I like this place. They have a large selection of wines and I have not been disappointed in the food. The cheese tray is great and I love their hummus trio.
Some of the staff are very nice but other staff can be a bit snooty. Not really sure what they have to be snooty about… it is food and drink.

I think I just found my new favorite spot. Bf & I weren’t sure where to go for dinner and ended up here. I was not expecting the cozy ambiance, as I drive by here frequently and just kind of assumed it had the same vibe as Carsonie’s across the street.
Um, hello! This place is so great! I LOVED the décor and big walls of wine and I’m sure much of my joy was just being someplace new. We opted to sit at a high-​top by the bar and had a great perch for people-​watching. I like that you’re able to shop the wall for your bottle of wine (if you don’t want a full bottle you can buy by the glass). The best thing was that I saw bottles as low as $ 10. Kind of a bummer the corking fee is $ 8, but oh well. I hear the corking fee is waived on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Bf & I each got a Winery Salad, which had great flavor. The proportions of ingredients were nice too — just enough gorgonzola to match the tartness of the dried cherries and counter the sweetness of the candied pecans. Really enjoyed this salad. The bread that came with it was hard as a rock though. Kinda tossed that aside.
For dinner we split the Fondue Trio and Veal Meatball. Both were amazing and I would definitely order again. The fondue consisted of 3 cheeses mixed with wines. The cheddar and port was AMAZING! It came with italian bread and pita, though I could have done with just bread.
The meatball was equally amazing. Tender and flavorful and covered with a delicious marinara and melted gooey cheese. (Yes, there was a lot of cheese going down at our table).
For a bottle of wine, 2 salads and 2 small plates our total came to about $ 65. Is it great for every night? Nah. But when I want a cozy date night out I’m glad I have a new place to add to the list!

A lovely evening dinner with my in-​laws, but would love to go back with some of my girlfriends next time I’m in town!
Started with a glass of La Forcine while we waited for the rest of our party to arrive. Nice and crisp… very low sugar… really liked it. I enjoyed the tomato soup with a Bistro BLT flatbread. Our party had a mix of flatbreads, salads and sandwiches. Portion size was perfect for me but maybe a bit small for my brother-​in-​law (but we fed him our leftovers so all ended well). Shared two desserts (a chocolate something or other and a bread pudding) with an after dinner drink and a fine night was had by all.
The only thing I didn’t love was our server. She was fine but it felt like we waited an awfully long bit sometimes. Didn’t seem to have much wine advice for us, either. Oh well. The bottle of Pinot I picked was actually pretty good :)
I’ll definitely come back with a group so that we can try more variety of apps and wine!

We were excited to try this restaurant — what’s not to like about a wine bistro?!
We got a white wine flight that was pretty good. Unfortunately, it was all downhill from there.
The food was just fine, and definitely not appropriately priced. My flatbread was okay, but nothing spectacular.
The icing on the cake, so to speak, is when I noticed that my water had a bug in it. Not just in it, but frozen into one of the ice cubes. Pretty disgusting.
Overall, disappointing. We won’t be returning.

Decent food, a lot of wine
Disclaimer: I am not much of a wine drinker and know almost nothing about them.
With that out the way, checked out he wine bistro tonight and was not thrilled like I expected to be. Our party did not have reservations, but we were early enough to grab seats in the bar area. The wine I picked was not appealing to me, but since I don’t know anything about wine that’s my bad. The crabcake appetizer was tasty, but not phenomenal by any means. The entrée also was ok but not special (short ribs & mushroom risotto). I didn’t see any desserts so that was all I had.
Overall decent experience. Maybe if I become more knowledgeable about wine I will try again.

I’m still a fan, but the WB has changed a bit.
One of my favorite items was their fairly priced, small cheese plate for $ 6 that had hearty servings of fruit, cheese (cubed/​pre-​cut), candied nuts, a warm baguette & flavored, house-​infused (and fantastically delicious) honey — no more. Now they have a three-​cheese option, which is just a thin slice of a few cheeses, no nuts, some fruit and some sort of apricot or orange marmalade. Don’t get me wrong it was good, but not as good as its predecessor. AND they raised the price to $ 10. Bummer.
Wine is still great. Although they ran out of two of their by-​the-​glass options tonight. Another bummer.
Still a great place for gathering, still a great menu, still great wines, but no longer worthy of my 5 stars.

I am the furthest thing from an oenophile – I’m still in the red wine with red meat and white wine for everything else phase, but I love this place. The food and wine are pretty good and the service is great.
The wife and I have been here twice, both times on spur of the moment afternoon dates. had the melted fondue trio twice, now and loved it both times. The Ementhaller and Sauvignon Blanc fondue will keep us coming back again and again. We also have had the «Blank and Blank» each time. Most recently, I had the Bistro Meatball Baguette as part of my combo, which was darn tasty. I’ve also had the Braised Veal Meatball flatbread (basically the same thing, now that I think about it), which was decent but a little less successful. The tomato sauce they use on this is a touch too sweet for me. Plus, I always feel a little guilty about eating veal.
Most recently, I had a 2008 Malbec that was very smooth. Like I said, I’m no oenophile so I can’t invoke any more sophisticated comparisons like «oaky», «smokey», «woody», «grumpy», «sneezy», «doc»… wait a second. Anyway, it tasted pretty good and lunch for two with drinks came to a little less than $ 50. Pretty good value, I think.
The ambiance is quite nice. This is one of those places that always makes me feel slightly more sophisticated than I actually am. Or maybe it’s the wine. There are several two and four tops, a bar area and a larger table near the front of the space for large groups. Additionally, there’s a neat private dining room that would be a fun night out for a smaller group or a few couples.
Perhaps one day when I retire and have sufficiently pickled my liver enough to become knowledgeable about wine, I’ll turn up my nose at places like The Wine Bistro, but till then I’ll keep coming back for good food, good wine and friendly service.