Jax Fish House & Oyster Bar

You walk into a high-energy seafood joint expecting a perfunctory list of oaky Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio, and instead you find Sancerre, Muscadet, and Champagne NV sitting quietly on the menu like they've been here the whole time. It's a pleasant ambush. The list is compact — somewhere in the 60-to-100 bottle range — but whoever put it together clearly understood what goes with oysters.

The regional focus leans hard into the Old World classics that actually make sense next to a raw bar: Loire Valley whites, Burgundy Chardonnay, and a Champagne NV section that earns its spot. Pacific Northwest and California fill out the back half, giving the list some New World ballast without letting it drift into generic territory. There are real gaps — don't come expecting Chablis or anything esoteric from Jura — but the bones are solid for a seafood house in the middle of the country. At $38–$100 a bottle, the pricing is reasonable enough that you're not being punished for ordering something interesting.

The by-the-glass program runs 12–20 options, which is genuinely generous for the format and price point. At $10–$18 a glass, you can work your way through the Loire Valley section without a second mortgage. Rotation is unclear — it may be more set-and-forget than actively curated — but the range covers enough ground to keep things interesting across a full dinner.