WINE + MARKET.
Jesse and I have been a bit under the weather this week, but we couldn't resist the pull of the sunshine today! Seriously...60 degrees...in January. Kind of terrifying, but also really lovely! Hoping the warmth would heal our sickly selves, we made our way to Lexington to try out a place called Wine + Market.Simply put, we were not disappointed. This small corner of W. Second and Jefferson is hard to describe...it's not really a restaurant, but they have gourmet sandwiches like the duck confit with gorgonzola and apples. It's not a bakery...but there are baskets of fresh bread, nutella brownies, and macaroons. It's not a cafe, but an shiny red espresso machine hides in the corner. There is a beautiful case overflowing with amazing cheese and meats, rows of dried herbs and fresh vegetables, shelves full of Kentucky Proud products, and a bowl of fruit on each table. Wine + Market is essentially what it claims to be: a market, full of locally-made products. That means they sell sandwiches made from local cheeses, fruit, and meats on bread from Sunrise Bakery a few blocks away, and they also sell bags of Weisenberger Mill flour and cold bottles of Ale-8. It was very charming.PLUS: the back room is a wine shop! Many of Jesse's favorite natural wines were available, and he was able to have some nerdy wine conversations with the owner, something I can't often indulge him in. Here is the bottle we ended up buying:
I was rooting for the one with donkeys on it! Along with the wine, we had a delicious lunch and a really lovely afternoon. I would absolutely recommend this place - whether you need a cup of coffee and a pastry, a pound of salami, goat cheese, a loaf of fresh bread, a red velvet cupcake, a warm duck panini sandwich, or a good bottle of beer or wine. They also sell gift baskets full of local products (a GREAT idea!) and they have wine tastings and events.
Jesse and I left Wine + Market with bellies full of tasty soup and sandwiches. That, along with the sunshine, has us feeling much better! It was the perfect sick-day adventure, and we hope to do it again soon (minus the sick part!)
- Hannah.
VEGETABLE PLATE.
Hannah and I have a somewhat unspoken rule of only eating meat we either, 1) raised ourselves, or 2) trust/know the farmer who did. This does not bode well for us in 99% of the restaurants that exist in the middle of the country where the menu is three pages of meaty fare and one vegetable option: The vegetable plate––a convenient selection of the sides they already offer, most of which are cooked with meat, or come from a can. There are a lot of terrible things involved with a vast majority of the meat available––that's no secret––especially the type of meat that ends up in the restaurants we're talking about. And these restaurants make no bones about the glut of chicken, fish pork and beef offered, nor do the patrons really care, even if they are well-aware of the issues involved with conventional meat-operations. I haven't always been particularly discriminating about my own meat consumption, so naturally I never noticed the lack of vegetarian options. They didn't concern me. The farm changed all that. Having raised an animal, killed it and ate it, my relationship with food has changed dramatically. I simply don't much want to eat animals not treated like animals, not treated humanely. Even though the vegetables aren't great either, as the adage goes, we'd rather eat inhumanely treated vegetables than inhumanely treated animals. So often, when we have to eat out, the vegetable plate is our only alternative. I am not unaware that menus are a product of demand, either. In fact, that is what's most notable about the vegetable plate, that it exists so ubiquitously because vegetables are flat-out not as popular as meat. Or more precisely, they are not popular at all. This may seem obvious, but there are simply not not enough people concerned with meatless meals to necessitate an actual vegetarian dish in these restaurants, so the restaurants themselves chose not to bother spending time and money creating one. You either eat a salad ("hold the bacon please") ask them to leave the steak off your pasta, or you get a plate with four or five sides piled on with no real order or care. The vegetable plate is a microcosm of the apathy our "Where's the Beef" nation still holds towards the vegetarian: join us, or learn to survive in our world. And that's fine, I'm not complaining, I just wish that instead of "Vegetable Plate" the menu would be more honest and read, "The dietary concerns of vegetarians are not recognized by this establishment," and I could just guiltlessly order a plate of french fries like I want to do anyway.- Jesse.
