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Bar review: Come for the food, stay for the wine and beer at Brick and Mortar

 
Brick & Mortar bills itself as a wine bar, though it has plenty of locally produced food and beers. It has a rustic/rural vibe, its walls paneled with multicolored reclaimed wood slats and old wooden pallets hanging above the bar, adorned with potted succulents. 
Eve Edelheit/tbt*
Brick & Mortar bills itself as a wine bar, though it has plenty of locally produced food and beers. It has a rustic/rural vibe, its walls paneled with multicolored reclaimed wood slats and old wooden pallets hanging above the bar, adorned with potted succulents. Eve Edelheit/tbt*
Published June 12, 2015

By now, you've probably heard about St. Pete's Brick & Mortar (subheading: Kitchen & Wine Bar), despite the fact that it's not even 2 months old. This tiny 500-block restaurant is the brick & mortar facility of In Bloom Catering, a formerly Tampa and now St. Pete based catering company known for creative, farm-to-table cuisine.

Since owners Jason Ruhe and Hope Montgomery opened the doors in April, the restaurant has garnered an impressive amount of hype from critics, bloggers and locals diners alike. Check the plentiful 5-star reviews on Yelp, which feature an assortment of suitably-wowed diners who can barely believe what they've just eaten.

I was out with a friend who insisted that Brick & Mortar had recently served him the best meal he's ever eaten in St. Pete, so I decided it might be time to check it out.

Others more qualified than me have described the food at Brick & Mortar, so I'll focus on my particular area of expertise. But I will note that, despite the menu being devoid of vegan-friendly options, the kitchen crew kindly whipped up a seriously delicious custom option, featuring a salad of fresh, local butter lettuce and beet greens with heirloom tomatoes and pickled vegetables, partnered with a bed of crispy, roasted Brussels sprouts topped with green peas and a balsamic drizzle. I can see what people are getting so worked up about.

The restaurant interior is very charming. The look is rustic/rural, and despite a location on a particularly busy stretch of Central Avenue, it's pretty convincing. The walls are paneled with multicolored reclaimed wood slats, and old wooden pallets hang above the bar, adorned with potted succulents. It's clean, simple and cozy (which helps when the place invariably fills to capacity around dinner time).

Brick & Mortar bills itself as a wine bar, so I expected pretty much what I got: a tidy but diverse wine list with labels that have been carefully selected by people who know what they're doing. There's a Bordeaux Superieur from Chateau Lafite Monteil in France, a Macabeo from Luzon Blanco in Spain, a variety of titles from the Pacific Northwest — best name: Horseshoes & Handgrenades, a red blend from Moutin Noir in Oregon — and a dry Furmint from Evolucio in Hungary.

These are wines that are great on their own, but that would fit in with a nice meal quite comfortably.

While wine is the primary focus of Brick & Mortar's drink list, the beer selection is not even close to half bad. The menu includes beers of various bold flavors, many of which had to be picked with food pairing in mind.

For example, a recent tap list featured Barley Mow's Calliope, a Berliner-esque wheat beer made with tart cherries and lemons, while Brooklyn Brewery's new ½ Ale — which has creamy, rich dill notes from Sorachi Ace hops — is light enough to wash down a big meal, while being robust enough to stand alongside any big flavor you can throw at it.

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Another cool touch is the fact that most of the beers on the menu are local brews. Is brewery-to-table a thing yet?

If you asked me what I'd change about the beer and wine selection, the answer would be something between not much and nothing at all.

Ruhe and Montgomery have been getting plenty of play for the food at Brick & Mortar, but don't think that they just slapped together a drink menu as an afterthought. It may not be the biggest list in town, but it's well-selected enough that I could recommend stopping in to take a look, even if you didn't have food in mind.

— jg@saintbeat.com