|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Crush’d Wine Bar + Kitchen has all the bases covered for a full food and drink experience.
There are a variety of settings to sip and eat. The front tables by the windows offer a bird’s eye view of Railroad Street. A row of booths resides across from the bar. At the back is a long communal table, a lounge-like area with velvet and leather couches, and more tables.
The draft beer is good, and so are the pours from wine kegs which reduce the environmental impact of transporting glass bottles. In the keg, wine maintains freshness and ideal serving temperatures.
The seasonal, made-from-scratch food at Crush’d is overseen by Francis Hogan, the Founding Chef – Culinary Director of the Sabio Hospitality Group which includes fine dining Sabio and sports bar Pivot (opening in first quarter 2025) in Pleasanton. Advocating sustainable partners and practices, Hogan names purveyors on the many menu items and features down-to-earth prices at Crush’d.
Add these factors up, and you may think that Hogan has crushed it in the hospitality business.
But the grapevine behind Hogan at the opening event and the 24 wine taps along the bar wall points to the restaurant’s mission to pair interesting wines with food. The mastermind behind the drinks program is Ranier Reglos, the Beverage Director of the Sabio Hospitality Group.
Wine at Crush’d
“Our wine pours are ‘barrel to keg’—it’s like visiting at a winery and sampling from the barrel.” said Reglos. “We invested in the preservation system here to set up the draft process, and it has paid dividends in quality. In our first two months, we went through 58 kegs which saved about 1,500 bottles.”
The Las Positas Vineyards Rosé from Livermore is on draft. With a crisp, refreshing flavor profile, the wine paired well with Hogan’s stuffed Medjool dates.
A few weeks later at a wine event, I spoke with Las Positas winemaker Brent Amos about the Crush’d wine keg program. Amos confirmed that filling the five-gallon kegs—basically a five-gallon beer keg—saves them from the bottling, labeling and shipping 25 bottles which equals a case of wine. “The kegs are returned to us, and we simply clean and refill them,” added Amos.
At restaurants, I observe how wines sold by the glass are stored. If the bottles are open, corked and standing on a counter in a warm room, I may ask the servers how long the bottles have been open. Servers rarely know. Since the Crush’d kegs maintain the wine under optimum condition, Reglos offers three-ounce, six-ounce, nine-ounce or carafe pours of wine from California, Oregon, France, Germany and Italy.
Another advantage of using kegs is the ease of offering wine flights. Kudos for Reglos enabling guests to select three small pours of any wine rather than choosing among pre-ordained flights of, say, Chardonnay.
Sauvignon Blanc has gained precedence over Chardonnay in the U.S. Following this trend, Reglos’ top selling wine is currently Exit West Sauvignon Blanc from Lake County, Calif. Grapes from Exit West vineyards go into their wine and are also purchased by several Napa wineries. By chance, family members of the founders of the winery, Robert and Madi Mount, live in Danville and were dining that evening.
A few days later, I contacted J J Foster, Estate Director of Exit West who noted that the winery in Kelseyville is pleased with the eco-friendly keg program. “Although only a small portion of our current business, we believe it will grow exponentially over the years,” added Foster.
Reglos also oversees the several dozen wines-by-the-bottle in the Wine Library List and three non-alcoholic wines. Reglos currently features local craft breweries Morgan Territory (Pleasanton Hill), Epidemic Ales (Concord), and Gowan Apple Cider (Mendocino County).
Crush’d Cocktails
After consulting with Reglos on the cocktails, my friend Margaret Smith chose the Grape Thyme cocktail. What makes this cocktail special, Reglos noted, was the main ingredient, Remy Martin V. “We were the first Calif. bar to stock the reintroduced Remy Martin V (aka VSOP) which is aged longer than the standard VS Cognac.” We both liked the cocktail with house-infused Aperol with thyme.
As a non-Mezcal lover, I challenged myself to order the Apple + Eve cocktail. A mix of Mezcal, Calvados apple brandy, apple syrup and pomegranate, the cocktail pleasantly surprised me with only a slight smokey flavor. Reglos dehydrates apple slices for the garnish.
Another notable cocktail is the Pumpkin-Spice Espresso with vodka, coffee liqueur, and Irish Cream plus Reglos’ recipe for Biscoff spice featuring cinnamon, clove and cardamom. Bourbon, rum, and tequila headline other cocktails. Non-alcoholic versions of several cocktails including the Grape Thyme are made with alcohol-free spirits.
Reglos’s creativity manifests in the Aperitivo Hour cocktails offered daily along with $9.00 small bites. The California Blanc with Scribe Vermouth, Lillet Blanc, lavender bitters and hibiscus soda, sounds intriguing. Scribe is a well-regarded winery in Sonoma owned by the younger generation of the Mariani family of dried fruit fame. The base wine for their Vermouth is Scribe Chardonnay which is then fortified and infused with orange peel, wild fennel and lemon verbena.
The food
At Sabio Chef Hogan enjoys presenting seasonal dips, fresh crudiés, and house made pickles. On the Crush’d Shared Plates menu, he offers a similar version along with crudo, salads, and duck fat marble potatoes. We chose lamb meatballs accompanied by house made harissa relish, eggplant and a savory herb yogurt quickly and dipped bread into the sauce.
From the Small Bites section, the kabocha squash soup with toasted levain bread was nearly a meal for $8.00. The satisfying allure of the soup was influenced by the mix of toppings: crumbled Journeyman Meat Co. bacon, crème fraiche, and chives.
The stuffed Medjool dates sounded simple but again, brought textural surprises. Biting into the filling of the bacon-wrapped date, Smith was delighted to taste the contrast of the dried fruit and salty bacon with creamy Shaft’s blue cheese and tangy house made vincotto, wine cooked down to a syrup.
The Artisan Meat + Cheese Board menu provides nine selections of each at set prices and a Chef’s Curated Selection. The tartines, open-faced sandwiches served on Firebrand Bakery sourdough or gluten free focaccia, are easily a full meal. I tucked into the Wagyu roast beef tartine with Dijonaise mustard sauce, caramelized onions and blue cheese and took half home.
Caviar and reasonably priced food are not usually found in the same sentence. But Chef Hogan offers a small “bump” of caviar in addition to larger, more expensive options. Priced at $15.00, the small “bump” portion of sustainably farmed Calif. Caviar Co. paddlefish caviar (salt-cured fish eggs) is served on a traditional pearl spoon rather than metal which imparts off-flavors. Feeling courageous to try caviar for the first time, Smith said, “The fish had long lasting flavor, and I liked how it rolled on the tongue.”
The remaining menu section is labeled “Tinned Fish.” This does not refer to Chicken of the Sea tuna. In Southern Europe, tinned fish is a specialty item. Crush’d offers tinned sardines, preserved branzino, and anchovies from Spain and other countries in more flavorful versions than those stocked at the grocery. The restaurant hosts a small shop to take home specialty items like as the tinned fish, jars and bottles of specialty vinegars, olive oil, jams, plus well-curated wines.
Sabio in Pleasanton doesn’t have a shop, but you will find Hogan’s rotating tasting menu, à la carte items, plus weekend brunch, an expanded wine list, plus weekday Happy Hour prices on food and drink. I look forward to the specialties Pivot will offer on Hopyard Road in Pleasanton in 2025.
