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Euro Wine Bar: Tapas in Nicholasville

By Howard M. Snyder hsnyder@herald-leader.com

NICHOLASVILLE — For a couple of months, I'd heard rumblings of a wine/tapas bar in, of all places, Nicholasville. Having grown up in Fayette County, I was well aware that for decades, the Fayette-Jessamine county line heading south was the end of legal alcohol sales until you reached the Tennessee state line. When I hear things like this happening south of Fayette County, it's like hearing that Yankees are in Georgia. Even though I know that alcohol sales are legal now in Jessamine County — well, heaven forbid, Carrie Nation came from these parts.

Euro Wine Bar has few external adornments, but it was easy to find. It's directly across Main Street (U.S. 27) from the highly visible Main & Maple Coffee House and Café. There was a pretty decent crowd for a Thursday night when we went.

Inside, it's a chic and warm café with ­pumpkin colored walls. Tables were well-spaced, and service was friendly and helpful. Everything was like going to most restaurants until our server gave us the menu. Astounding! The sign on the window said tapas and hors d'oeuvres. We were given a list of 20 tapas and hors d'oeuvres, five salads and six desserts, and a wine list that went on and on.

On the list, all of which sounded wonderful, they had garlic shrimp cocktail ($8), mini hot Browns ($6), potato tacos ($5), stuffed eggs ($5), seared steak tostadas ($8), wild mushroom tapenade ($7), pan-fried ravioli ($6), fondue ($7), crab and goat cheese empanadas ($8) ... I could go on and on.

We sampled the crab and goat cheese empanadas. Four little baked turnovers were filled with a mild goat cheese and nicely flavored crab meat that you could taste. Mango chutney was served on the side. They were heaven on earth.

We also tried the fondue. A bowl of goat cheese and wine had been prepared in the ­kitchen and brought to the table with an ­assortment of crudités and bits of bread. The goat cheese was so mild that I thought it was Parmesan. It didn't have that strange but ­pleasantly funky goat taste. It was delicious.

We wanted to try the wild mushroom ­tapenade, but they were out. We ordered instead the gourmet stuffed eggs. Instead of the usual mayonnaise and egg (egg/egg) filling, the folks in the kitchen at Euro Wine Bar mixed the egg yolk with pesto. The flavor of basil turned one of my favorite finger foods into another animal. I've always known that you can mix whatever you like in these delectable morsels. Pesto made them even better.

We finished our sampling of tapas and hors d'oeuvres with smoked salmon ($8). Thicker cuts of hot-smoked (and therefore cooked) salmon were served with slices of French bread, capers, chopped onion and cream cheese. A bit here and a bit there, and we were stuffed.

We washed it all down with a highly ­recommended Hall's cabernet sauvignon ($11 a glass). It was ripe with fruit, delicious and served in beautiful Riedel glasses.

We had to finish this visit with coffee and dessert. We split the dark-chocolate bruschetta ($5). The espresso I ordered came from the Main & Maple Coffee House across the street. It was excellent espresso. Now, the dark ­chocolate on the toasted bread was, I think, ­ganache. It never hardened. I took one of the four slices home. It was still soft the next ­morning and went well with my coffee. It was rich, teeth-hurting dark chocolate and ­wonderful. Other delectable desserts were grilled bananas, crème brûlée and berries in white chocolate.

Carrie Nation, eat your heart out.

Dinner for two, including tax but not tip, was $60.