Most restaurants operate in a top-down fashion, with the owners and the chefs positioned above all the other staff, making decisions about food, wine, service and even ultimately about when to close the place down for good. But there is something more populist in the DNA of Kennebunk’s Old Vines Wine Bar, something that tips the balance of power in the opposite direction.
You can probably trace this ethos back to the restaurant’s recent Lazarus-like revival. In late 2014, after the previous owner shuttered the place, two regulars, Jon Ellms and Rick Taranto, stepped in and bought the business themselves. They were not restaurateurs, but they pressed on and reopened a few months later, broadened the menu and eventually hired Joel Souza (formerly of David’s KPT and The Colonial Inn in Concord, Massachusetts) as their new chef this January.
“Rick and Jon didn’t want it to stop, so they just fixed the problem themselves. And they are here all the time, eating, getting their hands dirty working, helping set up events – anything and everything,” Souza said.
Indeed, the restaurant’s entire team has been part of its recent transition from a bar that serves light pub snacks to a fully realized small plates restaurant with an extensive wine and cocktail list.
As we discussed the wines offered by the glass with our server, he told us how they were selected: “Everyone on staff got together for three really long, really intense days of tasting and we chose what to serve by the glass together.” When I asked Souza about this democratic selection process, he added, “Here, everyone has a voice and maybe even their own steering wheel and can take things in the direction they want to. Everyone has their input.”
The system has worked particularly well for the list of white wine pours; there are super crisp sauvignon blancs (in two styles), chardonnays (oaked and unoaked), a gently floral and petillant Oregon pinot blanc blend ($6 for a 3-ounce pour and $12 for 6 ounces), and even an off-dry German riesling ($4/$8). There’s a white wine here to pair with just about everything on the broad menu.
Democracy has not been as kind to the red pours. We loved the bacony, unoaked Ique malbec ($4/$8) and the hearty, spice box-scented nebbiolo ($8/15), but among the cabernet sauvignons and massive, fruit-blasted red blends, found nothing by the glass on the lighter side.
That’s a shame, because several of the menu’s offerings, most especially the wonderful baby kale salad with terrifically stinky fromage forte and macerated cherries ($12), would have been superb matches for a glass of Beaujolais or Bardolino. To get a lighter red, you need to buy a bottle.
No matter what wine you select, there is a lot to like about the Old Vines menu. Dishes are mostly nominally French or Italian, but Souza takes familiar foods as a starting point and finds creative ways to “pack as much flavor as possible into a small plate and create something people haven’t seen before, or haven’t been able to try in Kennebunk,” he said.
Nowhere is this more evident than in his take on steak frites ($16), a juicy, grilled flatiron served with soft, almost poutine-like french fries sprinkled with pecorino romano and a watercress salad. And oh, that salad! Topped with petal-pink pickled onions and dressed with a lemon vinaigrette infused with horseradish – a clever reference to the traditional steak frites accompaniment – the greens practically incandesce with brightness.
Even on the cheese and charcuterie plates, we saw evidence of Souza’s big-flavor project in his extraordinary homemade giardiniera with sprigs of barely dressed pea shoots. Served alongside our order of fat-streaked duck prosciutto ($12) and toasty, semi-soft Ouleout cheese ($10), the pickle of red pepper, carrot and tiny cauliflower florets offered exactly the right fresh, tangy balance to the cheese and house-cured meat.
It’s easy to appreciate little touches like a bit of chunky texture to add interest in the lemony homemade hummus ($8), dusted with nostril-expanding za’atar and served with savory toasted pita triangles. Or the addition of just enough cinnamon to the roasted beet salad ($10) to conjure up images of Morocco. Or even the sticky toffee pudding ($7), baked in a ramekin so that every last serving comes with a tender center and a firm, chewy perimeter.
Some menu holdovers from the restaurant’s previous regime remain, such as Old Vines’ signature dish: the oven-roasted chicken meatballs ($12) – straightforward Italian-style fare served with a pomodoro sauce and basil chiffonade. On our visit, we found the meatballs to be a little overcooked and the sauce far too acidic – more like hot sauce – perhaps due to the white wine the kitchen uses in its pomodoro. At the same time, the meatballs themselves had an agreeable complexity, which Souza explained comes from the use of lots of marble rye bread in the panade that binds them. While this wasn’t a terrible dish, plenty of other, more interesting plates better represent what the kitchen is doing today.
But maybe keeping the chicken meatball as its mascot isn’t evidence of an identity crisis at all. Perhaps it’s humility acting as camouflage to keep too many tourists from filling up the little restaurant’s few dozen seats and crowding out the regulars.
That clientele still plays an important part in the collaborative evolution of the restaurant, candidly and frequently sharing thoughts on new menu items with Souza: “I’ve never had this level of feedback, and a lot of these guys have pretty refined palates. It makes me better at what I do because I can see what’s working and what isn’t really fast,” he said.
And considering that it was two of those very same regulars who saved the business and hired its innovative chef, it’s easy to see why everyone would want to keep a few seats open for them.
Andrew Ross has written about food in the United Kingdom and in New York, where he co-founded NYCnosh, a food website. He and his work have been featured on Martha Stewart Living Radio and in The New York Times. He is an Internet researcher and higher education consultant. Contact him at:
Twitter: @AndrewRossME
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