DiningBuzz! - Wireless Wine Lists? Not sure how I feel about that.

This morning's NY Times talks about a restaurant opening on a couple of weeks in several stories (granted it reeks more of paid placement then news, but that's how the Times is now). One of the stories (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/dining/02tside.html?scp=2&sq=tablet&st=cse) is how instead of a traditional wine list, they are going wireless.

http://i30.tinypic.com/xc3vx5.jpg

I don't know, to me part of the fun of fine dining is thumbing though a huge wine list, leaving a finger in the whites and a thumb in Italy while checking out France, flipping back and forth to compare and decide. For me, I really don't feel how getting a wireless tablet will be the same experience.

Which is funny, since I usually am the first to back any technology like this.
Has anybody seen or used one of these? How was the experience?

Yuck.

Could be a great help for people who don't know a thing about wine (like me). I could do with a good pairing help. Though I'm not sure whether I'd like them to replace a good sommalier.

Will it save me from conversations like the one below?

"What wine would you recommend to go with my meal?"

"The XX is a great choice."

"Fine bring me that."

5 minutes later....

"I'm so sorry, we're out of XX. Here is the wine list again."

"OK. Let me look.

5 minutes later...

"I'll have the XXX."

"Great, I'll get that right away, sorry for the delay."

5 minutes later...

"I'm so sorry, we just sold the last bottle of XXX. Anything else appeal?"

This is something that happens often at a very busy tapas & wine bar I frequent. If they had a wireless, up-to-date wine list it would be great. And they could introduce new wines, get rid of unpopular ones, etc. easily and without extra printing costs. Bring me a Kindle-ly thing and I'll be happy.

I kind of like the idea personally. They could link up to reviews on Wine Enthusiast or something like that and make the selection process a more educated one for novices like myself.

I definitely missed the "browse thru the wine list" experience, but in addition to knowing what they had or were out of I liked being able to choose sort options for a category, search for individual wines, and then add ones that looked good to a favorites list. Since I was with a large group, I picked out a dozen "candidate" wines that were good and in a reasonable price range, then everyone else could look at just that group and vote on which one to choose.

Bob

This sounds a little like a more understated version of Nolan Bushnell’s uWink concept restaurant (http://www.uwink.com/). (the same guy that founded Atari and Chuck E. Cheese’s)

The website of the company that made this showcases tablet menus for restaurants, that will show you the food, allow you to order, send the order to the kitchen, and then revert to a picture frame and show you pictures during your meal.

I think the menu concept for food is weird, as everybody needs one or it will take forever to pass from person to person.

Wirelessly posted (Nokia N97 / Palm TX: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; PalmSource/Palm-D050; Blazer/4.3) 16;320x448)

The website of the company that made this showcases tablet menus for restaurants, that will show you the food, allow you to order, send the order to the kitchen, and then revert to a picture frame and show you pictures during your meal.

I think the menu concept for food is weird, as everybody needs one or it will take forever to pass from person to person.

Dont like this idea....

While I am certainly one for technology...


I don't know, to me part of the fun of fine dining is thumbing though a huge wine list, leaving a finger in the whites and a thumb in Italy while checking out France, flipping back and forth to compare and decide. For me, I really don't feel how getting a wireless tablet will be the same experience.



Couldn't have been said better. I love going through a restaurant's wine list page by page.

This wireless listing is the latest in a succession of wine marketing gimmicks. The last I remember is "pairing a wine with an entree" and before that was the number ranking by Wine Enthusiast et al.

MisterNice

I'm not sure how it would feel, but if nicely done, I think it can be a good experience.

not for me, i too prefer thumbing through a big leather bound wine list

I'm sure the driver behind this is money. Easier to dynamically adjust the prices on a tablet PC than reprinting the pages from a bound wine list.

I hope they adjust down for the stuff that isn't selling, and much as they adjust up for the stuff that is... :(

This wireless listing is the latest in a succession of wine marketing gimmicks. The last I remember is "pairing a wine with an entree" and before that was the number ranking by Wine Enthusiast et al.

MisterNice

yes... marketing but also price gauging.... :td:

Don't like this idea. Like others the fun is scanning the pages, jumping back and forth comparing. Books are still much better than tablets for that kind of activity.

My all time favorite of yesteryear, both the resturant and its owner now departed this vale of tears, hada unique approach....

Every couple of weeks, the owner visited a couple of wine merchants and picked out a half dozen decent wines in a price range that allowed him to sell them for about $30 (adjusted for today's prices). That, and any leftovers from his previous purchases marked down if sold slowly, made up his "Wine List", samples racked labels visible just inside the front door and copied on 5"X8" "cover stock" at the table.

There were few if any "repeats", and the name of the game was to try new sources, varietals and wineries. He was knowledgeable and careful about his selections, avoiding duds, and the results were educational and uplifting, yet realistically and appealingly priced to encourage consumption.