The Art of Entertaining: Great spot for creative dinners3 min read

I just have to tell you about a great night we had at a spot up the street from my house. I, embarrassingly, didn’t know what went on in this storefront spot until the other night! I always saw people walking in and heard music from time to time and I saw the wine. I was intrigued that’s for sure!  So, I’m going to let you in on this little secret…Julie Dowty, the owner, has had this place for years and, simply, has a fun passion for this creative and casual environment that I think you will enjoy. 

The Art of Entertaining. OK, I don’t even know where to start. It is a great place with a few different rooms that can be used for meeting spaces, dinner parties, birthdays, showers, they work with any theme and any number of people. You can also enjoy some of the planned events like the Vine & Dine with live music or Pop- up dinners. 

I went to a pop-up wine dinner. It was a mix of people all ready to have fun and by the end of dinner, we were all chatting with each other and having a great time. We started the night with a wonderful charcuterie board and a couple of wines that Julie served up with a personal, fun description for each one. This wasn’t a detailed discussion, but more of a brief story of how she found that particular wine. You could follow along as you get a handout with a lot of information that you can look at on your own time (sometimes you just want to sip and eat not listen to the in-depth details cheers to that). We, then, moved on to enjoy an awesome crab salad crostini yum! After that, we all shifted into the other room where we mingled and some of the guests were invited to join in making the vinaigrettes for the meal. It was so fun getting involved. Not everyone had to do it, so it was very casual. Some of us wondered out onto the back patio and then we decided it was such a beautiful night we might as well just eat out there… so we did. When the salads were served, everyone was voting (very competitively :) on their favorite vinaigrette which just added to the unique fun of this whole experience. For dinner, we were served a delish salmon over jasmine rice and, for dessert, we all came back into the kitchen and assembled our dessert of lemon cream & raspberry phyllo napoleons. 

The whole night was such a unique interactive experience, that I loved so much that I already made a reservation to celebrate my mother’s 95th birthday dinner there! 

I would suggest checking out their calendar HERE and join the mailing list so you can keep up with the fun. Also, if you have children, look into the Summer Kids in the Kitchen classes! It looks like they have so much fun. If you oversee work team building or you are part of a group of people wanting a farm to table experience, or you would enjoy an interactive Italian dinner or you just want to be served a delicious meal…. this is the place to go! And for some real fun, they told us that they have done a cooking competition with a group of teams where they had to make a dish using what was available in the cabinet just like on t.v. I think that would be a blast. 

Things To Know:

• 2019 Madison Rd. Look for the Uncorked sign

• Plenty of parking on the street or in lot across the street

• They also have a wine store so stop by and check it out