Wine Exchange
1609 Snow Ave, Tampa FL 33606
This is NOT a restaurant. You may be forgiven for believing you are entering a real restaurant, after all Wine Exchange is located in Old Hyde Park Village in it’s new incarnation between two real restaurants, a corporate pastiche of a lame idea and an independent enigma.
Wine Exchange is a classic example of what is wrong with restaurants in Tampa Bay. This is a rather mundane bar that produces platters of “stuff” with silly names requiring little culinary skill or appreciation of reasonably good food. The soups do indeed appear to be homemade yet can always be counted on to be too salty and luke-warm. Salads appear large and contain ingredients of little quality. The dressings are often over-powering and far from subtle. Pastas are over priced and forgettable. Sandwiches and pizzas are commonplace. Other dishes do not warrant comment. Desserts provide a significant mark up and that’s all.
The service oddly can on occasion be what you would expect at a real restaurant. Having said that I have suffered through faux pas after inexplicable faux pas. Awful service like awful food and décor is the fault of the owner(s) or management. My rule of thumb is as follows: if the food and décor are lousy while the service is eager with an attempt at professionalism = tip on the service. Never, ever under-tip or begrudge a tip if the food is insufferable and service excellent. All complaints about anything at a restaurant must always be addressed to the owner or manager. Do not subject a wait-person to your wrath. They can and will get another job if the owner/manager is not up to par.
Wine Exchange for some baffling reason would like to be thought of as an oenophile’s retreat. Unfortunately that requires knowing how to open a bottle, pour and wait for it….clean glasses. If I did not know better I would think this was a restaurant version of Judy Garland and Micky Rooney trotting out the well-worn line “hey I’ve got some curtains, let’s put on a show!”
Food: sub par
Service: schizophrenic
Ambience: uninspired
1609 Snow Ave, Tampa FL 33606
This is NOT a restaurant. You may be forgiven for believing you are entering a real restaurant, after all Wine Exchange is located in Old Hyde Park Village in it’s new incarnation between two real restaurants, a corporate pastiche of a lame idea and an independent enigma.
Wine Exchange is a classic example of what is wrong with restaurants in Tampa Bay. This is a rather mundane bar that produces platters of “stuff” with silly names requiring little culinary skill or appreciation of reasonably good food. The soups do indeed appear to be homemade yet can always be counted on to be too salty and luke-warm. Salads appear large and contain ingredients of little quality. The dressings are often over-powering and far from subtle. Pastas are over priced and forgettable. Sandwiches and pizzas are commonplace. Other dishes do not warrant comment. Desserts provide a significant mark up and that’s all.
When you move from run down dirty digs to sparkling new premises you’d think it would be a priority to make the best of a good situation. Was it the cost? Lack of imagination? A distrust of interior designers? The end result is unfathomable. The colors, the mirrors, the hanging light fixtures. It’s all wrong, yet while not exactly hideous it is hard to imagine how the décor could be more uninspired; then again there is the “makeover” at Mise En Place.
The service oddly can on occasion be what you would expect at a real restaurant. Having said that I have suffered through faux pas after inexplicable faux pas. Awful service like awful food and décor is the fault of the owner(s) or management. My rule of thumb is as follows: if the food and décor are lousy while the service is eager with an attempt at professionalism = tip on the service. Never, ever under-tip or begrudge a tip if the food is insufferable and service excellent. All complaints about anything at a restaurant must always be addressed to the owner or manager. Do not subject a wait-person to your wrath. They can and will get another job if the owner/manager is not up to par.
Wine Exchange for some baffling reason would like to be thought of as an oenophile’s retreat. Unfortunately that requires knowing how to open a bottle, pour and wait for it….clean glasses. If I did not know better I would think this was a restaurant version of Judy Garland and Micky Rooney trotting out the well-worn line “hey I’ve got some curtains, let’s put on a show!”
Food: sub par
Service: schizophrenic
Ambience: uninspired
