Secco? or Succo? (jk, that's just bad)

On the old St. Tropez corner of Cary and Sheppard Street now sits Secco Wine Bar, a small….well, wine bar (obviously). And that’s really all there is to it.


Allow me to explain:

My first and only visit to Secco was on a Friday afternoon around 4:00. This is arguably the WORST time to visit the place. They don’t have much to offer in the ways of food anyway, but their lunch menu (which consists mostly of paninis) ends at 4:00 and the dinner menu doesn’t start until 5:00 (and is all small plates).

So our food choices were comprised of different antipasti, meats, cheeses, their sweet corn soup, and three salads. That being said, we did love the food we selected. My friend and I split some prosciutto and 2 different cheeses (zamorano and something that looks like quadiello but I'm not sure because it's not on their wesbite menu http://www.seccowinebar.com/main/#to-eat), complying with their ‘3 for $13’ deal on meats and cheeses. They also have ‘1 for $5’ and ‘5 for $21’ deals. We also got an order of an antipasto which, honestly I can’t remember the name of (because once again, it’s not on their website menu) but was surprisingly amazing to me. We were not disappointed in the quality of the food. It was quite good. Quite.

The décor didn’t hurt the experience either. Even though the space is rather small, the custom built cork-top bar or tables provide enough seating space for any size group. The small 2 couch lounge area in the front of the restaurant and the floor to ceiling windows make for an excellent environment for sipping (or chugging, no judgments) a glass of wine while watching the sidewalk traffic of Carytown.

The best and most surprising part of the experience was the price of the wine. We both got white, her’s being on the drier side and costing $6, while mine was sweeter and $8. Both delicious.

But when came time to pay the bill, they may have lost a customer in me. After requesting our food be split evenly, we found it was not. So we sent back our checks with our debit cards and our TRUST. When the checks came back we noticed that it seemed I’d paid for the more expensive check; another mistake. But then later on I found out that they hadn’t charged me for the wrong check, they’d charged me for both checks. Times are tough people. I was not happy.

However, owner Julia Battaglini was very cooperative with fixing the problem. After informing me she could not put the money back on my card, she offered the options of gift card or cash. I took the cash; maybe even a little more than I was owed. But you know what, I’m not sure. Either way, the problem was corrected.

And besides the check mix up, the staff was overall very friendly.

In short, go for the wine. Expect little more than that. But, after all, that’s what it’s there for.