Mopsie B.
Yelp
I love the concept. And I think they mean well. But most of the staff here is very, very green and/or inexperienced about wine in general, which is disappointing for the prices.
First things first: Food is excellent. Everything we tried was flavorful, fresh and perfectly executed. That said, $18 for six small oysters is a bit absurd. As is $8 for bread and butter. However, the watermelon and feta salad was amazing. My mussels (and I am a mussels snob) were on par with those I have had in France. My husband said his eggplant parmesan was also fantastic. Our dessert of soft serve with berries also elevated a simple thing into something special. Portions are a little small and sides are extra, so this is perfect if you want a light meal. They asked us to order everything (appetizers and entrees) at once, which we found a bit strange. Our server was very insistent about it.
As for wines: They have an eclectic mix, definitely something for everyone. But our server was just not trained or experienced enough to understand our comments and questions. And one major faux pas is that none of the whites we had were adequately chilled. When you are spending $15+ a glass on wine, you do not expect it to be room temperature. We then asked if we could have a chilled bottle and it threw our server into chaos. She literally didn't respond. We saw that they appear to have a sommelier or someone behind the bar in a sport coat, plunging bottles into a bucket of ice but since we were there early, we apparently got a fresh, warm bottle. They didn't have any chilled whites, but of course, as the evening went on, those bottles on ice did cool down.
As for the wine shop, again, very accommodating, pleasant and helpful but when I ordered some bottles for pick up, I got the wrong order and although I did get an apology, there was nothing offered for my trouble, only a choice of a refund or to come back to swap out the wrong bottle.
I really want to see this place succeed but I think better training and customer service is needed to bring Verve up to the ideal it aspires to.
The savior of that evening was Justin, who exposed us to a Corsican dessert wine and really knew his wines and regions. This was the level of knowledge we were expecting! He really went above and beyond to make our experience great. We will definitely return for one of their tasting events and hope that with time, things will become more seamless.