| rev:text
| - I went to the holiday wine pairing and tasting dinner last night at the Rania's location in Mt.Lebanon. The tickets were $65. First, the table clearly sat 16 people, at most, but they sold 21 tickets. There was plenty of room where they could have added another table to the end, or even if they had separated it and made it 2 tables so you'd have additional end seats (the "table" was a group of small tables put together so that could have easily been accomplished, but no). There were THREE chairs at the end of the table that was no more than 4' wide. You were literally shoulder to shoulder with people you didn't know. The "silverware" was plastic. The cups were plastic. Only the wine glass was glass, and as we came to learn, you used the same glass throughout for all of the "tastings" - not ideal at all.
Now for the food...first they brought out loaves french bread style bread, unsliced, on one big platter. You had no choice but to manhandle this bread - there was no napkin, no knife, no tongs - you were just expected to rip off a hunk. So now I'm eating bread that's been touched by 20 other people. Then they brought out 2 clams Rockefeller that were very good. (To be honest they were VERY good!!) And a portion of 2 was fair I felt as an appetizer. Then, after the bread was gone and the clams were eaten, only then did they bring out butter. Which, whatever, I don't even use butter, the timing was just questionable. Next came one slice of turkey stuffed with sausage. Very tasty, but one thin slice? This event was touted as "dinner" mind you. Oh, these foods are being served on, you guessed it, plastic plates...anyway, the turkey was good but a very small portion. The next course was a beef skewer. Now I'm cutting beef with a plastic knife - as you can imagine, it didn't go well. The first piece of beef on my skewer was a solid piece of fat and inedible. To be fair, the rest of the skewer was very good. Lastly was a piece of chocolate something...it wasn't cake, it was sort of like fudge...? Very dense. And it had some type of sauce drizzled over it - I think it was white chocolate but it didn't have much flavor. And now for the wine, the gentleman who was explaining the wines droned on and on telling stories (we're talking 10-15 minutes) before pouring each wine. Bearing in mind it was only about half information about the wine and half story telling. In my opinion it would have been better to give a brief explanation of the wine, pour the wine, then explain further and tell the stories, etc. Each tasting was small (it's a tasting after all) and the final one was a port that I couldn't drink. So to review, for my $65, I drank about 2 total glasses of wine, ate the equivalent of about 1/2 of an entree, served on picnicware, in a very cramped environment. Overall not a great experience. In case you're thinking "well maybe she's just overly fussy" some of the comments that I heard from others were "How soon can I get out of here?" and "Is this over yet?" - no exaggeration. Overall the food was good, so I'd consider stopping in for takeout (that's the only reason it got 2 stars, otherwise it would have been 1), but I wouldn't go to another one of these events.
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