Bardea Steak

Walking into Bardea Steak, the wine list signals ambition immediately — this is not a restaurant treating wine as an afterthought. A 150-plus bottle program anchored in France and Italy, with a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence on the wall since 2023, tells you someone in this building actually cares. Wilmington doesn't have many places like this, which makes it worth the drive.

The list leans hard into the classic red wine canon, and for a steakhouse, that's exactly right. Piedmont is well represented with Barolo producers sitting alongside Brunello di Montalcino for the Italy contingent, while the French side covers Bordeaux classified growths and Burgundy Pinot Noir with enough depth to keep things interesting. Napa Cabernet makes its obligatory steakhouse appearance, and there's a nod to the southern hemisphere with Barossa Valley Shiraz for anyone who wants their tannins with a little more grunt. The gaps are on the lighter, more adventurous end — don't come here hunting natural wine or anything left-field. This is a list built to sell alongside a bone-in ribeye, and it delivers on that brief.

The by-the-glass program runs 12 to 20 options, which is respectable for a room focused on bottles. We'd expect the pours to skew toward the big reds that anchor the bottle list — Cabernet, Sangiovese, maybe a Bordeaux blend — though rotation appears limited. If you're flying solo or testing the waters before committing to a bottle, there's enough here to work with.