Coal Vines

I give this place no stars. Do not go here. Staff specially GM Steve accuse people of things and then show no proof.
Horrible place. If your not liked there and don’t leave a tip watch out if you go back they will probably spit in your food!

Went to go try this place but its closed down operations since Jan 26^th 2015 :-(. So I’ll never know if it was good!

I really enjoyed the food. The corn chowder appetizer was probably the best I’ve ever had. The lamb chops and chicken were perfectly prepared. The service was good. For some reason the waiter kept referring to be as «boss». That annoyed me, but I chalk ed it up to his age more than anything. I don’t understand the parking setup. Almost every space was reserved for the valet service. This seemed odd considering we were in the burbs and not downtown. All in all, I definitely recommend it.

Amazing restaurant and wine bar. The chef Heath gave our group the best explanations and recommendations of food and wine the menu had to offer. Excellent customer service.
Will be back many more times

Awesome service
Awesome pizza
Gluten Free for the win, got one to go it was so good.
If you want the best pizza come here.
Posted photos of my meal and outside so go check it out. Awesone wine selection, and beautiful interior.

Excellent pizza, wonderful wine, great location, attentive service and nice décor. Because we roll with a toddler who likes ducks/​lakes, we ordered bruschetta, plain/​cheese pizza, caprese salad (with avocado and amazing balsamic), and pasta bolognese. Waitress recommended silver palm cab and husband had a great glass of malbec. It wasn’t cheap but we will come back again with wine and pizza loving friends. Overall, I think we preferred it over Grimaldis and Corellis.

We heard good things about their pizza so we gave it a try and were not disappointed.
Nice thin crust and very tasty sauce and lots of options for toppings.
If you like wine this is an excellent place as they have a terrific variety.
As good as the food was, the service was even better. Our waiter was outstanding and very helpful with wine suggestions. We couldn’t decide between our usual wine and something new so he gave us a blind taste test to let us decide. After the test we agreed his suggestion was better. We will definitely be back!

I have tried this restaurant twice now and the first time we had a very bad experience with the manager trying to tell me that my clams were fresh when we got a bowl with all the clams closed (75%). You don’t pry open a clam with your fork… when it is shut it is dead and not edible. This time we went for pizza which we heard was maybe better than the entrée meals. Unfortunately we were not impressed. Grimaldi’s pizza is better. Place is expensive and wine is definitely overpriced. Zucchini chips were not crispy and were small… definitely not large enough to share with 3 people at a table.

Went there for dinner on Friday night, busy but not too busy… able to be accommodating.
Pros: very attentive waitstaff without being pushy or overbearing my husband and brother in law liked the guacamole burger and their tuna tartar. The Margherita pizza was pretty good. Our server was awesome.
Cons: tiny tables that make you feel like a clumsy giant. The baby spinach salad was all spinach w wayyyyy too much dressing. It was terrible. Barely any slices of pears… Five tiny tiny slivers and 3 candied walnuts. Disappointed. Their pesto-​pasta something or other which was a special that night was mediocre. Pretty disappointed.
Maybe sitting outside or at a table by the window would make you feel like you have room to eat. Also, not being vegetarian seems to help make your dishes more appetizing.

Not too many places in Sugar Land can you get great food, great wine with a great atmosphere, great service and a great patio to enjoy all of that! Coal Vines never disappoints! Start with the Seafood Risotto Cake for an appetizer… mmm! Perfect with any of their special wines recommended daily. Then move on to any of their coal brick oven pizzas or the Chicken Marsala. Again… mmm! We love that we can come here and enjoy a nice meal with friends with nice wine and enjoy a spectacular view.

It’s a 3 star meal with a 4 star view. When the weather is nice, I can’t think of a better spot than on their patio looking out on the lake to sip on some wine. As for the food, it’s normal for coal fired pizza to have char on the crust, but ours was a little too charred. The salad was excellent. The wine list is extensive. But the patio is just plain perfect. We found ourselves wishing we had a room at the Hyatt across the lake so we could drink more wine and walk across the little bridge to call it a night. With a little more planning, one night we just might…

The only reason I’m knocking it down to 3 Stars is because of the service. We went for HH on a Friday and had about 8 people. It was very hard to get our waitress to come by and we kept sitting there with empty glasses. The most frustrating part was when the bill came she put us all on one ticket and said she didn’t know how to split the check. The manager or someone was helping her and 15 minutes later we started getting checks seperately. I still didn’t have my and my friend got the wrong bill and another was charged for someone else’s drink. It took about 30 minutes from when the checks came to when we finally paid and left. The food has been good in the past and the drinks are fairly priced. Not my favorite place to go but in the spring it will be nice to go and sit outside on the patio. Just hope you don’t get the same waitress we did.

For what we got — and didn’t get — it’s a nice little stop for a glass of wine with friends. And with the wine prices being so reasonable, it’s worth the 4 stars. I’m not basing this on a food order.
Good: The wine list is really pretty decent with both the selection and the prices. Most glasses are $ 8-​$ 14 per and the mark ups on the bottles for the most part were average for the area. I like that they bring the bottles to the table to pour. It’s just a nice classy way to serve wine at a wine bar IMHO.
Disappointing: We wanted the cheese tray to munch on with our selections. Seems no one ever ordered it and they had thrown away the cheese. Really? What wine bar doesn’t keep cheese? So that was a big disappointment.
Ick: They brought out some zucchini chips in a little bowl — like peanuts at a bar or chips and salsa at your favorite Mexican joint. Horrid! I see some folks like them a lot, so maybe it was just us. But no one at the table of 5 liked them.
The place was open and sunny inside on this lovely Sunday afternoon. It was also empty mid afternoon. On a cooler day we’ll enjoy brunch on the patio overlooking the man made waterway. Bathrooms were clean, waitstaff engaging and pleasant. The menu is not very extensive… even without the cheese!
I think they just need to pay a bit more attention to keeping things on the menu actually available and maybe add a few more small plates for munching. Most folks like our group that day are popping in for some wine and some finger foods — like cheese! Just a thought. But it’s in a great location so we’ll be back.

Oh man… The mimosas and brunch is kickin’! Loved my chicken and biscuits, but the frito pie breakfast thing… redneck breakfast I think it was called was AWWWWESOME! Their brick oven pizza was delicious and satisfying!
They were super nice and let us move from outside to inside with no problems! We had a good size group and our waiter let the mimosas flow! Bring your appetites! A big plus was that the prices were very reasonable. It’s a great place to chill out, eat, drink and leave happy!

Decided to try Coal Vines despite the bad reviews and I’m glad I did! A friend and I tried happy hour. Prices were good and there was a decent selection of a few apps– we had caprese salad, bruschetta, and fried ravioli. Only complaint is that they were out of cheese! What?! You’re a wine bar!
Good wine bar for Sugar Land. Worth a shot. Don’t let the reviews keep you away.

Got a nice lunch here with a friend. The atmosphere is nice and the day we went the weather was gorgeous. We sat outside on the patio looking over the lake, which was great. Our server was very nice and checked on us often.
Mimosas — Good! Though it’s pretty hard to mess these up. On the plus side, it was only $ 6 for a large carafe, which is cheap as hell, making them taste that much better.
Zucchini chips (complimentary) — these are delish! Wish we could just order more of them. Super thin zucchini, fried to a golden brown and seasoned perfectly. Gotta pace yourself or that little bowl will be empty before you know it!
Smoked Salmon tartar w/​goat cheese, avocado, pomegranate vinaigrette — The flavors were ok, but the ratio of salmon to the other ingredients was way too much. It overpowered everything. The wonton chips that came with it were perfectly crispy, and the texture of everything was pretty good. The portion is pretty large, we only made it through around half before we gave up.
Regular pie w/​pepperoni — Just a good, solid pizza. Obviously from a coal fired oven. The crust had a nice texture, sauce and toppings tasty.
We noticed that nearly every other table was having wine, and their selection is good for what I’d consider a family restaurant. I’d definitely come back and try some other things.

Ok, I’d have given this place 4 stars, if I didn’t just pay $ 6 for THREE SMALL mozzarella sticks… that was way overkill.
Menu is VERY restricted, it’s either pizza or wine.
Staff were excellent though, the server was friendly and not intrusive (which is important of course) and the pizza was pretty good too.
The atmosphere is lovely, sitting outside in the sunshine listening to the water, it’s perfect at this time of year!
I think we’d go back for sure :)

I came here on a Saturday at 2:30 pm. Yeah, late for lunch and too early for dinner so we got a brunch menu. Not a lot of selections on it. I went with the eggs benedict which comes with prosciutto instead of canadian bacon. The prosciutto was a thick slice. Not the type I am used to but I’m pretty sure it still should be edible. These slices were not. I had a hard time cutting it and then chewing it was just wrong. I had to spit it out. I couldn’t eat that part of the benedict. The meat looked overcooked and it probably was since the edges were thick and felt old.
The kids had a cheese pizza. While I did ask for a medium I was given a large. No biggie because the boys ate it up and left two slices which we took to go. These kids are cheese pizza experts. They have had all kinds of cheese pizza from all over Houston, Richmond, Sugar Land areas so they know what’s cheese pizza and what’s a gooooooood cheese pizza. They said this was a gooooooood cheese pizza.
Had the complimentary zucchini chips which like all other reviewers mentioned was delicious. It was the highlight of my meal. The waiter we had was Marvin and he was such a nice guy and very attentive. The ladies room was clean which is a good sign. We ate outside and what a great view.
So would I return? Maybe, for some zucchini chips, some cheese pizza and throw in a glass of wine and yeah, I’d come back for that but not in the near future.

Overall: A restaurant like this would normally get 3 stars, but the food quality and flavor was consistently disappointing and bumped it down to 2 stars.
Food/​prices: Price-​wise it’s average for an Italian restaurant (though the portion sizes aren’t impressive) so prepare to spend at least $ 8 – 12 for an appetizer, $ 10 – 15 for an entrée and $ 14 – 18 for a pizza, depending on what size (regular or large) and extra toppings (each extra topping is $ 1.50) you get.
The best item we had were the free zucchini chip appetizer they give each table at the beginning.
— We tried two appetizers: 1) the seafood risotto ($ 10) was on the smaller side, served with a marinara-​type sauce, and pretty tasty and the 2) salmon tartar ($ 10), which was palatable but weird, with a clumpy texture and random avocados and some kind of cheese distributed throughout it.
— We tried two pizzas: 1) the sausage and red pepper (very average, the base was literally «weak sauce,» haha, but there were plentiful toppings and the 2) white pizza special (the ricotta was overwhelming and gave the pizza a mushy texture; bland overall).
— We tried two entrees, both were small for the asking price; they each came on a bed of greens soaked in a nearly tasteless vinagrette: 1) baked salmon (average; I would have rather made my own so it’s nothing special) and 2) shrimp and scallops (over-​salty but the prawns were tender).
Service: attentive but not remarkable.
Ambiance: relaxing and quiet with diffuse lighting. A nice little place tucked away near Whole Foods on Highway 6 and 59.

I’ve now been to Coal Vines twice and I can say they are pretty consistent, but it’s a consistency of average. I’ve been here for an early dinner (before sunset) and a late dinner. My experience has been just so-​so. I hope they make some changes soon, because I want to like this place.
The location is nice. It’s quiet and there is a nice view of the lake. I like their choice of music (all 1950’s especially the rat pack) as it really fits the theme of wine bar and casual Italian. The décor is nice. The waitstaff and managers are strange. There is a GM who wanders around on his cell phone a lot but there is also another manager who looks much more hands on and on top of things. I just don’t think the GM should be wandering around inside and outside on his cell phone, it just seems unprofessional, especially in such a small space. Also, it’s COLD in here. I told the GM that I was freezing and his response was that he was from Montana and it always seems warm to him. Um, ok, well, turn the AC down.
The patio is really nice, especially with the fans, misters, and sun shades. The patio was quite popular both times we were here.
Food: We got the calamari appetizer both times we went and once it was light and crispy and the other time some of it was mushy and soggy. I love the julienne zucchini that is battered like the squid, but it can’t be left all limp and soggy. The pizza is thin crust and you can get a variety of toppings. The pizza is ok, but it gets cold quickly because it is so cold inside. My husband enjoyed his Italian sausage and peppers pizza. My father really enjoyed the short rib special with risotto, which was a compliment as risotto isn’t usually his favorite. The chicken Parmesan sandwich was not good. The chicken is obviously cooked earlier in the day and then just warmed, coated in cheese and marinara, and served up on a roll. The chicken wasn’t very warm, and I wasn’t impressed. I wouldn’t get it again. So, we had both good (calamari, short ribs, my husband’s pizza) and not so good (mushy zucchini in the calamari, bad chicken Parmesan sandwich).
Alcohol: They have a lot of wine for a restaurant of this size. they will happily let you buy them by the glass and they are extremely healthy pours.
The two waiters we had were very different. The first one was overly chatty and strange. He told us the short rib special never existed and that the manager had just made it up to fill the board… really? Well, I guess that was wrong as my father had that exact special a few days later. Our second waiter was much better and more professional but extremely hard to understand. Our second waiter was very hard of hearing and his language skills made him really difficult to understand. I’ve taught students who were deaf so I was able to understand him, but other people at our table had no idea what he was saying. I’m really glad he has a job, but waiting tables with a loud environment makes him an ineffective waiter.
I don’t think I’ll be back too soon. They need to get their AC under control, work on their sandwiches (please make them fresh), and get that GM an office to make his calls in.