Circl

Wine wonderland with generosity at its heart.

November 18, 2024

2 / 9Caviar with brown-butter crumpets.Arianna Harry Photography

4 / 9Whole trout with egg salad.Simon Schluter

5 / 9Snapper with lobster sauce.Simon Schluter

6 / 9Goat’s cheese and beetroot eclair.Wayne Taylor

7 / 9Casual with fine-dining underpinnings.Wayne Taylor

8 / 9Fennel-crusted duck breast.Wayne Taylor

9 / 9Asparagus prepared three ways.Wayne Taylor

15/20

European$$

Wine people say that it’s hard to understand good wine until you’ve tasted great wine. Unfortunately great wine is almost always prohibitively expensive.

This modern wine cave wants to offer the great stuff to all wine lovers. Rare wine isn’t limited to four-figure bottles at Circl. There’s a huge selection by the glass or taste, including a 2020 Meursault Blanc from Domaine Roulot – like drinking sunshine.

Pickled mussels and creme fraiche arrive in a tin, ready for scooping onto rectangular potato crisps. New season asparagus – lightly blanched and pickled – reaches soulmate status with comte custard. Fennel-crusted duck bathes in Davidson plum sauce with burnt orange.

Exciting pours for under $20, sharp service, and the boundless enthusiasm of founder Xavier Vigier (ex-Ten Minutes by Tractor): is this the wine bar we’ve been missing?