Mike’s Food for Thought

I had heard a lot about the wine bar/restaurant called Corks and More. So I went over to check it out and I am glad I did. It’s right on the inlet at 708 West Buffalo Street in Ithaca. It’s a rather large place filled with comfortable easy chairs, there are tables with stools, a full service bar and there is an outdoor patio right near the water. They call it the ultimate wine tasting room. When you enter, they give you a card resembling a credit card. They ask you how much you want to spend and they enter that onto your card and you pay them that amount.

Scattered throughout the place are wine stations. Each station holds several bottles of wine. There are wine glasses hanging near each station. You slide your card into the machine and press the button for the wine you want poured. You have a choice of a one ounce, half a glass or full glass pour of that particuliar wine. The price of each pour depends on the quality of wine you choose. A one ounce pour varied from $1.25 to as much as $13.00. I put $20.00 on my card and I tried about 9 to 10 one ounce pours. Each time you slide your card into the wine station, it gives you a running tally of what’s left on your card. Very cool. I really enjoyed picking out what I wanted to try. They had about 45 wines to choose from. They had wines from Italy, France, USA, Greece, Australia, and New Zealand. They change the wines so when you go back at a later date, you can try all new wines.

They also have a kitchen, which serves Tapas. A tapas is a small plate of food. They had a nice variety of food and all of it was tasty. My friend and I tried the focaccia bread with dipping herbed olive oil, the meatball sliders, and we had a selection of crostinis. A crostini is a piece of toasted bread with a topping. We had the smoked salmon, cucumber with horseradish and caper sauce, the pesto chicken with fontina cheese, the spinach, tomato, with pine nuts and olive oil and the corned beef with swiss cheese and horseradish sauce. Everything was seasoned up nicely. It was very good. Prices ranged from $2.50 to $10.00.

They also had many other tapas plates such as: grilled pork with a walnut sage sauce, maple glazed chicken with toasted pecans and sweet potatoes,salmon with almond caper dressing and lots more including cheese and olive plates. I did not have dessert but they had several yummy things on the menu.

Their website is www.corksandmore.com. They are open Wednesday through Sunday. The kitchen closes earlier than the tasting room. Check out their website for details or call 319-4172. I recommend it especially if you like wine. It was a fun evening.