Sybill's - Eating and Drinking, Drinking and Eating

I worked our salesroom on Friday last week while Clyde stayed back in the apartment. Doing what, I did not know at the time. But at the end of the day, he came over and sat down to chat with me.

"I cleaned the kitchen," he told me "so I think you should take me out to eat." Here is his expression when he said that:

Isn't he adorable? I immediately answered, "You cleaned the kitchen? You deserve to eat at Sybill's for that!"

For those of you who have never stepped foot in my kitchen, there is a reason for us keeping it private - it's usually a disaster zone! Dishes? They can wait until tomorrow. The floor? Puh-leeze, it's just gonna get dirty again. And aren't all refridgerators supposed to be science experiments in progress?

So needless to say, for Clyde to clean our kitchen really was a monumental task and one that truly deserved a visit to our favorite restaurant in the area, Sybill's St. James. This restaurant is so elegant, the service is impecable and the food is divine.

Plus they have a wine list with more than one page. Candy!

We called up our neighbors to see if they would join in on the fun, and what do you know but that they were actually climbing into their vehicle to go to Sybill's too! They dropped by to pick us up and off we all went to the house of deliciousness.

Without my camera. Poo. And without reservations. Oops.

But it all turned out - we had drinks at the bar while we waited the 20 or so minutes to be seated. Crystal kindly snapped a couple of shots with her iphone during dinner. (And I stole a few photos from their website for this post too - photo credit goes to Sarah Cox for the restaurant shots that Crystal didn't take). Plus, we even ran into another neighbor who arrived just after we showed up. Impromptu Hwy T party!

That table is in the bar area - Laura and I got together one day for lunch at a table on the other side of the bar area. We ended up migrating over to this table for dinner...we couldn't leave. Seriously, when you go to Sybill's, you get to relax and no one rushes you off.

Even though you should probably go to the post office to mail in your state wine taxes. But that is another story for another day.

So back to the kitchen clean up reward dinner.....I drank a glass of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc for my cocktail. Sauv blanc is my favorite wine in the whole world (at least right now it is), and Kimmy does a solid job with that varietal. Everyone else drank cocktails like bloody marys, gin & tonic, or amaretto sours, but once we sat down almost everyone switched to wine.

Here I am after drinking two bottles of wine:

We had to order a third bottle of the red because I hogged all of those two. :) Kidding! I'm kidding. However, I did drink my fair share as you might be able to tell from the photo above.

At the table we ordered a bottle of a South African Chardonnay made by Glen Carlou (2009). It was OK but I wasn't wow-zowied by it. Not like I was with the Cabernet that we ordered made by Ladera (2008).

Wow-zowied, by the way, is not language used in all the fancy wine reviews. I hope you don't mind if I don't get too long on the description. I'm just gonna say that the Ladera was scrump-diddil-li-licious and I'd recommend spending your dollars on that wine over the Glen Carlou if your going for a higher dollar wine. That being said, one of the neighbors that was with us preferred the Chardonnay, so who am I to say what was best?

By the way, Laura, should we have some kind of wine rating system here? What do you all think?

Here's a close-up of the wine bottles:

My dinner was the fish special that night - Salmon Putanesca. Do you know what 'putanesca' means? I didn't. I had to look it up the next morning. It means 'prostitute' in Italian. Apparently ladies of the night would set out casseroles of spaghetti with this sauce on it to tempt men into their brothels. The sauce was made up of chunks of Kalamata olives, tomatoes, garlic, capers, and who knows what else. It was very Meditteranean and had so many rich flavors that the red ended up pairing better with this dish than the white wine.

Clyde ordered the garlic lover's steak for his meal. So we both had kind of a sexy meal theme going. I have to say though, we ate so much garlic that our breaths were not so sexy the next morning.

If you are ever in St. James, I highly recommend a meal at Sybill's. If you are budget minded plan on lunch, but if you want to treat yourself to a sumptuous, relaxing meal then dinner is definitely the way to go. For dinner I usually go with one of the specials, but my favorite lunch item is Sybill's Salad. My neighbor Crystal really loves the spinach artichoke dip from their appetizer menu.

There's no dress code at Sybill's, but we generally try to change into our non-wine-stained clothes before heading to dinner.

Well that's it for this quest. I'm sorry I forgot my camera and I will NOT be so negligent next time!

Happy Trills,

Katie

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Hmmmm, wine rating. . . Like, 1 to 10 chicks (good use for our cute graphic!!) or perhaps a "blah" to "Wow-zowied" to "scrump-diddil-li-licious" with a few more categories in between? Soooo many ways to go - I see we need to go committeeing on that! Cheers!

Posted by: Laura - Wine Chic | 07/08/2012 at 01:25 PM