Wine pubs are popping up all over town (Crystal Design Center alone has two) following identical templates: shelves of wine by the entrance, fake brick walls, wooden furniture, loft-style ceilings. As for the menu, it’s always steaks, pizzas, pasta—in short, Sizzler without the nice salad bar. This place is no different, friendly service and reasonable prices included, but that leaves two problems: Wine I Love You doesn’t seem to love wine that much, and we haven’t grown any fonder of chain food disguised as casual dining since the trend took off with Wine Connection in K Village. In fact, Wine I Love You is hitting a new low: order cold cuts and your pedestrian cured ham and greasy cuts of salami will arrive sans bread. “Would you like to order garlic bread?” was the only solution offered. Call us snobs but when you walk through a wine cellar to get into a restaurant, there’s the tiniest promise of some kind of European flair. Alas, the menu is more like a Midwestern diner. Potato skins covered in processed Kraft-style cheese, anyone? Or would you rather have ribs slathered in sweet ketchup? The meat is dry, and there isn’t a trace of herbs or smokiness. Even the “triple-cheese” pizza tastes like processed cheese—triple here seems to just mean more cheese, not three kinds of cheese. Sure, there’s foie gras on the menu, too, but we just didn’t have the guts to find out if duck liver, “banana bacon” and caramel sauce make for a good mix. Really, the place should have been called Coca-Cola I Love You. They do a measly four wines by the glass: two whites, two reds. And we don’t mean a tight, well-thought out selection. We mean Jacob’s Creek. Want a bottle? There’s no wine list, so get off your butt and go browse the “cellar,” where you’ll see mostly all-too-familiar names: Lynch, Jacob’s Creek, Hardy’s, Wyndham. If your nieces and nephews grew up on Pizza Company, they’ll be thrilled with a big family lunch here. After all, service is sweet, the place often gets busy, the decor is trendy and you won’t break the bank. But anyone who knows better will find it a long way from the true concept of a wine pub. Corkage B500 for wine, B1,000 for spirits.
