The Room
Vino Vino opened in 2003 as the most-considered wine bar in Hyde Park — Mark Avant's room dedicated to the proposition that a wine bar should be a serious-eating destination as well as a serious-drinking one. Twenty-three years later the room is the longest-running wine bar in central Austin and has earned a national reputation for its small-producer list.
The dining room is intentionally restrained — exposed brick, a long bar along the western wall, four-tops in the back of the dining room. The Wine Spectator has assigned Vino Vino its Award of Excellence in seven of the last ten years. The booking window is unusual for a wine bar — Friday and Saturday evenings book out by Wednesday for weekend visits.
The Food
The small-plates menu runs Italian-leaning — house-cured charcuterie, seasonal salad, a daily pasta, an oyster programme that rotates East-and-West Coast. The Sunday supper at $45 per person — a single-format three-course Italian — is the order for a first visit. The chef's-tasting at $65 per person is the deeper alternative.
The wine list is the room's centre of gravity. Six hundred bottles, almost entirely small-producer, weighted toward Italy and France with a serious Spanish and South-African bench. The by-the-glass programme is rotated weekly and runs to forty-plus wines on most weekends. The sommelier team is the depth of the staff, and a flight runs $25 to $45 per person.
Best Occasion Fit
First Date: The bar at Vino Vino is one of Hyde Park's most-reliable first-date seats. The wine programme is the conversation, the small-plates menu shares well, and the room's neighbourhood-wine-bar register reads as warm without becoming pretentious.
Solo Dining: The bar at Vino Vino is one of the better Austin solo-dining seats for the diner whose interest in dining is wine-led. The sommelier team will run a flight on request, the small-plates menu fills the meal, and the kitchen treats the diner of one with the same care as a four-top.
Birthday: Birthdays at Vino Vino are wine-led, small-plates-friendly, neighbourhood-wine-bar affairs the room handles with two decades of practice. The back four-top is the seat to request.