BYO Madness

Three recent BYO experiences, all a bit different.

About six weeks ago, we had dinner at a BYO restaurant in Highland Park that specialized in ethic food. It was graduation season, and the place was crowded and loud. That was fine with us.

When the waitress brought the wine glasses over, I inspected them, mostly out of habit, I think. One glass had lipstick marks that hadn't fully washed off from a prior use. I asked the waitress for a replacement glass, and she told me that they were behind in clean-up, that this was the last clean wine glass, and she suggested that I just drink from the other side of the glass.

Not a really good answer, of course. She finally brought over what she called "traditional" wine glasses from their home country. Basically, it looked like a double shot glass. But it was clean, so we had that going for us.

The next time, we were surpised to discover that the restaurant was a BYO. The really bad news was that the place was in Pennsylvania. The good news/bad news end was that we were in walking distance of a State Store. Not having shopped in one for several years, I'd forgotten (blocked?) how dismal they were. There were few choices in chilled white wines, and none of those were particularly impressive. The best chilled white was Kendall Jackson Chardonnay; not a bad wine, but not interesting. At least there was a decent selection of sake, which is what I wanted anyway.

Last week, we finally found the happy BYO experience at Za in Pennington. It was a small, quiet place with excellent food. There was a group of four men at the next table who were probably part (all?) of a wine club. They opened with a champagne, had another 8-10 bottles of dinner wine, as well as a dessert wine. And one guy even brought his own glasses. That was a very serious group of wine lovers. That was a restaurant that I can recommend highly if you're in mythical Central New Jersey.