- Michael Gebert
- Chef Michael Taus and beverage director Don Sritong of Coppervine
“You know, they did a really extensive training program. How would you like to take the wine test they gave the servers?” Jenn Galdes, publicist for Coppervine, a Lincoln Park wine bar and restaurant that opened in December, asked me.
The concept behind the restaurant is that every dish on the menu—created by chef Michael Taus, formerly of Zealous and Duchamp—comes with a well-chosen wine pairing, beer pairing, and cocktail pairing. Though the concept is straightforward, the menu, with three choices under every single dish, is daunting to look at. Helping you understand it and choose intelligently is what the servers were trained to do. “For me there’s always an added value in not only offering a pairing but a learning experience, an opportunity to taste something here that you wouldn’t taste next door,” says Sritong. (I think he means at other restaurants generally, but it’s worth noting that literally next door is a hot spot that opened shortly before Coppervine, Lettuce Entertain You’s Summer House Santa Monica.)
The gregarious Taus, prior to Zealous’s own 20-year-run a veteran of Charlie Trotter’s kitchen, puts it in more cheerful terms: “People were really excited, people were really interested in learning. Because I think Don gave them a lot of tools to be successful with.”
“On the pretest, I was really pretty nervous about who we were hiring,” Sritong says. “You assume that if people are coming to you having worked at Table Fifty-Two, at Senza, at Girl & the Goat, they’re coming to you with a world of knowledge—but that’s not always the case, not at least according to the pretest. But what I was really happy about was how they took the training. A lot of 90 percents, a lot of A’s and B’s. One guy, Justin, scored 100 percent. Didn’t miss a single one. Which is not what I expected.”
