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| - Oh, Humble, you tried so hard yet fell just short.
I know what you're thinking, a wine bar? What the hell was I doing in a wine bar? 99.99% of the time you'd be right, I never set foot in wine bars mostly because, well, they're wine bars. I don't like wine, I don't drink wine and the crowds that frequent said establishments just aren't my crowd. Curiosity and the wont to please my other half essentially led to our visit.
It's Lakewood. As soon as you enter Humble you pretty much get that feeling. Hey, man, no judgement here, just observation. Lakewood has that sort of polished, put-together, upper middle-class air about it and so does Humble. Polished wood bar, well-placed lighting, stone-accented wall. It's definitely got the feel of a place that was designed by someone with taste.
Humble is really about two things wine and pizza. You can't help but notice the two centerpieces of the restaurant, a dark wood, glass-doored wine closet and a ceramic-tiled cylindrical pizza oven. It's pretty clear that the place is here to serve wine fanatics, but that's not to say that they don't have something for the beer geek on their menu.
While not the largest beer selection - hell, let's just be honest - the beer list is pretty damn small. If memory serves, there are four beer taps and a handful of bottles selections. Sure, not great, but I managed to find some tasty selections including Petrus, a barrel-aged sour ale from Belgium.
We sat at the bar and while it took some time for the bartender to warm up to us, on average we experienced good service. It was pretty cool to sit right in front of the pizza oven and kitchen, which is right out in front, as we could watch the chefs hard at work tossing pizzas and assembling apps. Speaking of the food, this is where Humble just fell short for me.
First, the highlights. We thoroughly enjoyed the pizza we ordered. We opted for the mushroom variety. The crust had the perfect amount of char and the combination of crispy and chewy was spot on. The mushrooms were big and meaty and the combination of tallegio cheese and garlic was funky and spicy.
Because we were feeling extra gluttonous on the evening of our visit, we suffered through the chocolate tower. Of course, I'm freakin' kidding. This dessert was terrific. A towering dish featuring layers of chocolate mousse, chocolate ganache atop caramelized bananas and topped with a ball of crunchy peanut butter ice cream. We should have started with this.
The salads, we tried both the House and Arugula, were under-dressed and lacking acid. The arugula salad was especially lackluster and had all the flavor of oily grass while the hard, tiny currants in the house salad didn't seem to have too much of a purpose.
The roasted Brussels sprouts were a big letdown. While they were seasoned well, they were barely cooked almost to the point of being difficult to cut in half with a knife and fork. Roasted Brussels sprouts should be fork tender, people. The version at Lolita blows these out of the water.
Humble is exactly the sort of chic, wine-centric, pricey bistro that you'd expect to find in Lakewood. While not my bag, I can certainly see how wine snobs and wannabes would take to it. The service was good and the atmosphere classy and modern but the food just failed to wow, especially given the higher prices on the menu (pizzas average $15 and most apps are $10+). I'm definitely more of a Der Braumeister guy.
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