Riverview Wine Bar is located pretty close to where we live, just across the river in Minneapolis’s Longfellow neighborhood. For some reason, we’ve always felt lukewarm on visiting, but after last night I wish that we had given it a try a lot earlier.
It was a beautiful late summer evening—clear skies and a cool breeze—so we decided to sit at one of the tables on the sidewalk out front. I’m usually not very fond of sidewalk seating, as it tends to be a bit noisy, but a stone’s throw away from the relatively quiet corner of 42nd and 38th—the Riverview theater’s also located there—I had no complaints. The outdoor seating was practically empty when we walked up, but shortly after we sat down people started streaming in, and before long all the tables were taken.
The Riverview’s wine list is pretty impressive for a small place in South Minneapolis, and offers a greater proportion of their wines by the glass than trendier wine bars like Spill the Wine. The list was divided into whites, roses, and reds, then further subdivided by country of origin. Sarah ordered a Trefethen Riesling from California, but I was having a bit of trouble deciding what to get. With over 50 wines to choose from, it’s difficult to settle on just one. Luckily for me (and other indecisive souls out there), the Riverview Wine Bar offers, at any given time, as many as 12 wine flites to choose from, and on Wednesdays and Sundays they even let you create your own flite! This being a Sunday, I decided to create my own tasting, consisting of a French Riesling, a Vouvray, a Cotes du Rhone, and a California Zinfandel.
For food, Sarah went with a summer salad of greens, berries, and ranch dressing, and I decided to try one of their pizzas. All in all, the food was perhaps the least memorable part of the experience. Sarah’s salad was, in her words, “uninspiring”—the berries were not particularly flavorful, and the salad overall certainly wasn’t worth the $11 we spent on it. My “Stephano” pizza, meanwhile, was downright confusing. Consisting of prosciutto, Italian sausage, pesto, and a mix of five cheeses, it just tasted like a mess. Pesto and five different kinds of cheese? Is that really necessary? Between bites, I would have to take huge gulps of water so that the overwhelming taste wouldn’t ruin my appreciation of the wines—which were, overall, very good and well worth the money.
After we polished off our food and the first round of wine, we decided to split a dessert and a dessert wine flite. We settled on the flourless chocolate torte, which was great. Unfortunately, the dessert wine flite wasn’t quite what was advertised: according to our waitress, the Riverview’s wine list is in a state of transition, and so a number of the wines listed in the menu were no longer available. In particular, a German eiswein that we were both eager to try was no longer an offering. In spite of that, the flite was tasty, and for the most part paired well with the chocolate torte.
Sarah and Andrew’s Verdict: B-. This grade could have been much higher. Judged purely as a place to drink wine, the Riverview Wine Bar is excellent. The wine list is sizable and decently eclectic. Nearly all of the wines are offered by the glass, a surefire sign that they’re on your side—it shows that they’re more interested in introducing their customers to good wines than they are in making boatloads of money. The build-your-own-flite nights on Wednesdays and Sundays are especially nice, as they allow people to explore and compare different wines at a moderate price.
As a restaurant, however, the Riverview Wine Bar fails. The food is mediocre and overpriced at best, and at worst it actually competes with the taste of the wine—which is, in our opinion, the real reason to go! Our advice? Visit the Riverview Wine Bar, but make it a before- or after-dinner stop.
