Meat & Potatoes

Meat & Potatoes walks into the room with confidence — bone marrow on the menu, craft cocktails flowing, a lively Cultural District crowd. The wine list is 80-plus deep and leans American with some European depth, which sounds promising. Then you look at the prices and the confidence starts to feel a little less earned.

The list covers Washington State, California, France, and Italy with enough range to suggest someone put real thought into sourcing — there's a Barone di Villagrande Nerello Mascalese from Etna, a Jermann Pinot Grigio from Friuli, and a Joseph Jewell single-vineyard Russian River Pinot Noir alongside more familiar Orin Swift labels. That's a decent spread on paper. The problem is the execution: markups swing wildly, and not in your favor. The Orin Swift 'Blank Stare' Sauvignon Blanc sits at $110 on a wine that retails for $25 — that's a 340% markup, and 'Blank Stare' isn't even a prestige bottling. The Conte della Vipera Sauvignon Blanc at $100 (retail: $25) is the same story with an Italian accent. There are bright spots — the Joseph Jewell Pinot Noir at $54 on a $45 retail bottle is practically a gift — but the inconsistency makes the list feel less like a curated program and more like a grab bag where a few bottles got lucky.

With 15-25 options by the glass, the pour program is broad enough to satisfy most tables without committing to a bottle. We don't have glass-pour pricing on individual pours, but given the bottle markups, ordering by the glass might actually be the safer financial play here. The rotation doesn't appear to change much — this reads as a set-it-and-forget-it program rather than something that gets refreshed with the seasons.