(Image above: Chilled shrimp, Concord)
Cheesemongers Julian Dell’Oso and Clayton Edison have added another civilized amenity to Elmwood Village, next door to their Amabel Provisions cheese-charcuterie-gift shop. Concord is a wine bar, built to lure those who would like a drink and civilized nibbles, not the whole appetizer-entree-dessert shebang.
The other lure is that you can actually hear what people are saying on the other side of the table. The wine-by-the-glass list is carefully curated, cheeky, full of your oranges, reds, and whites. But the quiet is golden.
Edible offerings start with from Amabel stock, with cheese plates and accoutrements drawn from their stores. If it seems declasse to order a can of food in a restaurant, the sort of tins they’ll open for you might turn you around on canned seafood’s cachet. Give that Tenorio tuna filet in escabeche ($15) a squeeze of lemon. When you’re done fishing out the last shreds of scrumptious seafood, you may be tempted to drink the juice.
Others are original creations…