St. Clair Winery & Bistro

St. Clair Winery & Bistro Restaurant Review:

Adjacent to Old Town, this charming, easygoing eatery, wine shop and gourmet market has a lot --- arguably too much --- to offer. Run by the Lescombes family, who came to New Mexico from France to open what is now among the state’s largest wineries, it doubles as a tasting room for its entire portfolio, which ranges from sparklers, whites and reds to dessert and fruit wines. To accompany your pours, St. Clair presents a four-page menu that runs the gamut from home-style American to Southwestern to Italian and back again. It’s a bit overwhelming. But if you kick back and relax, you’ll find a number of dishes that are, at the very least, guilty pleasures. Dripping roast beef dip with sautéed onions, mushrooms and provolone, for instance. Or rigatoni with chicken and sun-dried tomatoes in a green chile-cream sauce --- executed with more restraint than you might think. Of course the portions are sizeable, as are the desserts, including an extra-custardy praline bread pudding. Delicate palates will be appalled by the heavy chicken potpie, but reasonable expectations can easily be met --- with one exception: your server may or may not know a thing about wine. And even that unfortunate likelihood can be overlooked when you’re chilling to the tunes of a jazz combo out on the adobe-enclosed patio.