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The 3rd Corner – Press
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June 16, 2011
We had a beautiful review from blogger, Alexa, who writes from blog, www.theshortandthesweetofit.com.
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A No-Whine Policy Restaurant
exploring wine with tim fish
3rd Corner concept succeeds at keeping wine prices low
Posted: Feb 16, 2011 10:00am ET
Griping about the high cost of wine in restaurants is a hobby for some people. If there were any money in it, I know a few people who could go pro.
Ed Moore isn’t one of those guys. Instead of complaining, he’s doing something about it. Grab a table at his bistro, the 3rd Corner, and a bottle of wine sells for retail plus $5. Before you say he’s doomed to failure, know this: Moore recently opened a 3rd Corner in Palm Desert, the third outlet of his Southern California restaurant/wine shop in five years.
The 3rd Corner experience isn’t for everyone. It’s a retail shop that happens to serve food—good food. Tables are scattered around the stacks of wine, and servers spend their spare time tagging bottles with price stickers. I’ve been to the original, which opened in Ocean Beach in 2006, as well as the Encinitas shop that opened two years later, and I was in geek heaven just roaming the shelves before taking a seat.
It has been a few months since my last visit, and the selection at each outlet changes frequently, but there are usually more than 600 different labels on sale. At the Palm Desert store, right now you might find Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon One Point Five 2007 for $65.35 ($70 suggested retail), MacPhail Pinot Noir Toulouse Vineyard 2007 for $40.60 ($50), Woodward Canyon Artist Series Cabernet 2007 for $35.50 ($49) and super value Zolo Torrontes 2010 at $10.30 ($11).
“People are tired of buying a wine at Costco for 10 bucks and then seeing it for $45 at a restaurant,” Moore said. “They’re fed up with the markup on wine at restaurants.”
The stores maintain a modest stock of older vintage wines, but 90 percent are recent releases. There’s no wine list available, except for a page of 20 or so wines by the glass, which is OK by me, since I like to explore and bring the bottle back to the table, where it’s opened by the server. Moore’s wine philosophy is simple: “We’re looking for wines that out-perform at the price point.”
The food menu, as you might expect, is wine-friendly, with both whites and reds in mind. You might have grilled fish tacos ($12) at Encinitas, a charcuterie plate ($10) or duck confit with white bean cassoulet ($16) at Ocean Beach and truffle risotto with wild mushrooms ($15) in Palm Desert.
“We’re not trying to be the French Laundry or anything like that,” Moore said. Maybe so, but I still clearly remember the mahimahi with panko and jalapeño-lime aioli I had a few years ago in Ocean Beach, even though I can no longer recall the name of the saucy Albariño I had with it.
It’s tempting to ask, “If 3rd Corner can do this, why can’t more restaurants?” But it’s more complicated than that. I’ve known too many chefs, their sacrifices and failures. The high markup on wine is easy profit for some, but a necessity for others.
And yet like many of you, when faced with those markups, I can’t always afford to buy the wine that I want with lunch or dinner. There must be other restaurants that have wine pricing policies similar to 3rd Corner. Have others succeeded or failed with similar strategies? Do you think it’s a concept that will catch on?
As for 3rd Corner, I’m thinking Moore needs to open an outlet in Northern California. Something a little closer to home, Ed?
A New Pricing Model for Restaurant Wines
Wine Talk by Robert Whitley
Creators.com
Posted: 10:56AM PT, July 29th, 2010
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No one can say at what precise moment wine bars became cool all across America. They were once the kiss of death, a sure-fire path straight to bankruptcy court.
This was a mystifying fate for what seemed a grand idea: a gathering place focused on good wines by the glass, with a few nibbles for background noise. Or perhaps a wine-centric restaurant that serves decent bistro fare with a killer wine selection.
Well-traveled wine enthusiasts knew Europe abounded with successful working models, from Willi’s Wine Bar in Paris to Bottega del Vino in Verona to Enoteca Ferrara in Rome.
Willi’s annual bottle art wine posters are iconic testimony to the staying power of the genre. Willi’s opened in 1980 and continues strong to this day. The posters are collected by wine lovers the world over. The wine list draws its inspiration from France’s Rhone Valley, though Bordeaux, Burgundy and other regions of France enjoy representation. By the way, the food’s not too shabby.
Opening at about the same time in Verona, Italy, Bottega del Vino unveiled an impressive collection of 80,000 bottles, with 60 to 80 selections poured by the glass every night. During the annual Italy wine show, Bottega del Vino is standing room only without a reservation. Beware the bow-tied waiter elbowing through the crowd with an armload of balloon-shaped crystal stemware! By the way, the food’s not too shabby.
Rome’s Enoteca Ferrara came along in 1999, offering much the same ambiance and conviviality but with a twist — a wine shop on the premises. Situated in the chic Trastevere neighborhood, Ferrara parlayed upscale cuisine, an extensive selection of wine and the hip, young crowd of one of Rome’s most fashionable districts into enduring success. You guessed it, the food’s not too shabby.
Until recently, America just didn’t get it. Perhaps the stress of having to say Chateauneuf-du-Pape out loud was too much. Perhaps it was fear of the geeky wine waiter, scowling at the uninformed behind that phony smile. Maybe, though I doubt it, no one had quite figured out how to do it right.
I choose to believe it’s a simple matter of maturity. Younger Americans of legal drinking age have grown up with wine; their parents and grandparents, not so much. A wine culture has emerged that has both stunned and excited the culinary world. Every other new restaurant that opens is obliged to tack the words “wine bar” at the end of its name. Nothing capitalizes better than capitalism!
While once they weren’t even part of the conversation, today wine bars are poised to set the trends that will guide the wine industry for years to come. Wines such as Gruner Veltliner, Albarino, Grenache, Cotes-du-Rhone Villages Lirac, Torrontes, Malbec, Jumilla, Prosecco, Nero d’Avola, et al, would be nowhere in America without the push they’ve had from wine bars, which go to great lengths to offer selections from the road less traveled.
The latest wrinkle to the traditional American wine bar is the wine shop within.
The idea is hardly new, having existed in Europe for many years. Before Ferrara in Rome, there was Juveniles, just around the corner from Willi’s in Paris. Juveniles is little more than a wine shop with a small kitchen in the back and a few dining tables scattered between the bins of wine. Doubtless there were similar enterprises throughout France and Italy before Juveniles. I might add, the food at Juveniles isn’t too shabby.
San Diego restaurateur Ed Moore embraced the concept after one of his ventures, a chic seafood restaurant, failed. A Paris-trained chef, Moore has owned several fine-dining and less ambitious bistro-style restaurants. A serious oenophile, Moore created The 3rd Corner Wine Shop and Bistro only after it became apparent San Diego didn’t really need another seafood spot.
Moore’s goal was to sell wine. The food was an afterthought. In the beginning, it was mostly small plates that were easy to prepare and serve. His twist was a $5 corkage fee. A diner could peruse the wine bins and select a wine. And for the retail price plus $5, a diner could have the wine served with a meal.
Such a transaction might be small potatoes in Europe, where direct sales are allowed, but in America this is huge.
America has a three-tier system. So the winery takes a markup, the distributor takes a markup and the restaurant or wine merchant takes a markup.
Restaurants typically get the worst break on price; wine merchants the best, for they purchase in much greater quantity. Foodies of America are conditioned to restaurant wines that are marked up double or triple retail. Thus, a $25 wine might fetch $45 to $65 in most American restaurants. At 3rd Corner, the $25 wine is served for $30.
So, while enjoying a $14.99 Lirac blanc for $19 over lunch recently at the new 3rd Corner in Palm Desert, Ca., I had an epiphany. I realized there is a reason Moore’s three wine bars are chronically packed. The crowds are there primarily to dine. Yet they have chosen this spot because they love wine, and here, finally, they can order a superb bottle of wine that doesn’t cost twice as much as the meal.
In my perfect world, all restaurants would be wine bars in spirit. Wines would be priced to encourage consumption. If all restaurants adopted the 3rd Corner pricing model, more second and third bottles would be sold to large parties. More high-end wines would be sold. And, in the end, more wine enthusiasts and even casual oenophiles would dine out.
This would be good for business, no? And I might add, it would help if the food weren’t too shabby!
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3rd Corner Pairs Wine with Bistro Fare
Desert Sun
Posted: 2:00 PM ET, July 22, 2010
With the bold, red metal stallion sculpture as its landmark, 3rd Corner Wine Shop and Bistro, formerly Palomino, opened this month.
More than 100 diners showed up during the first week of its official opening, said owner Ed Moore. Palm Desert is the third location for the San Diego/Encinitas restaurateur.
Moore didn’t seem perturbed about debuting during the hot summer off-season.
“It’s much better than opening in February when you get mobbed,” he said. “This way we find out what’s not right and fix it. If we can get the locals’ attention during the summer, we’ll have no problem in the season.”
In addition to serving lunch, Moore has introduced a Sunday evening three-course prix fixe dinner that includes a wine pairing with each course for $25 per person.
“This has been a success at our other restaurants,” Moore said. “Where Sundays had been kind of slow, the prix fixe menus that change every week have brought in quite a crowd.”
Tucked behind the soon-to-open Panera, 3rd Corner Wine Shop and Bistro, at 73-101 Highway 111, is a newly renovated restaurant with polished marble floor and bar, freshly painted brick red and ochre walls, and soft, low-energy lighting.
Amid stacks of wine cases in the middle of the cavernous room, the diner can select California and international wines by the bottle at regular retail prices. A $5 corkage fee applies to bottles enjoyed while dining.
“What is unique about our wine pricing is that it’s not double or triple marked up as in most restaurants when you order a bottle of wine,” Moore said.
Cozy booths and tables are to the left of the wine stacks, and the full bar with additional seating to the right. In addition to the veined marble floors, pillars holding arched pavilions and glass walls remain from the former Palomino restaurant, giving 3rd Corner an added elegance.
If guests enjoy the wine paired with any prix fixe course and want more, they can order an additional glass or bottle.
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A Great Example of a Wine Restaurant
Posted: 12:20 PM ET, July 28, 2008
Hey, what’s wrong with a restaurant making money on food? Does the wine list nearly always have to be the profit center for a restaurant?
Maybe these two questions are not fair, considering the cost of starting and running a restaurant these days, especially in major metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles or New York. But I still feel like asking these questions just about once or twice a month. We just pay too much in restaurants for a good bottle of wine. We all know that some restaurants mark up three, four or even five times.
Anyway, I went to a restaurant a few weeks ago with my dad, stepmother, brother, and son in San Diego County, and it was one of the few United States eateries that I have been to in a long time that was apparently making money on its food, and the owners were just happy with that. At least that’s what the manager of The 3rd Corner in Encinitas, Calif., told me when I asked him about his reasonable prices for wine. Thank you!
My buddy James Laube wrote about 3rd corner’s other location, in the Ocean Beach neighborhood, but he didn’t mention that all the wines are sold at retail, plus a $5 corkage fee. Check out my video of the place. Jack, my 14-year-old, did the camera work.
I picked out a 2005 Rudi Pichler Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Trocken Wachau Wösendorfer Hochrain. According to our database, I actually paid less than the release price. It was $42, including the corkage. It showed lots of tropical fruit and peach character. It was full and rich yet dry and minerally on the finish. I love a good Grüner Veltliner. I gave it 90 points, non-blind. My dad (a California Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc man) totally dug it. “What a delicious wine!” he said.
I also picked out a 2005 Alex Gambal Vosne-Romanée Vieilles Vignes, which I always wanted to try, and at $55, I thought, what the hell! Sure, it was just a baby, but what a pretty one at that. It showed bright strawberry and floral aromas with a sweet red fruit undertone. It was full-bodied, with silky tannins and a fruity finish. It was a little simple, but it was tight and slightly closed. It will be much better in five or six years, but I still gave it 92 points, non-blind.
The food is also very good at 3rd Corner. It’s what I would describe as French bistro food with good California ingredients. My scallops were perfectly seared and the veggies were crisp and tasty. I can’t remember what everybody else ate.
My brother David was “stoked” (he lives at the beach). “The wine prices make it here,” he said, as he finished the red Burgundy in his glass. “We drank a $50 bottle in a restaurant that should have cost us $150 or more.”
That’s the truth, brother. Do you know of similar restaurants, anywhere in the world, with such a great wine list policy? Please, share the knowledge.
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Peninsula Beacon Reader’s Choice Award 2007
Best Wine Selection
“Your first glance at this OB wine bar may prompt a certain confusion. You won’t know whether you’ve walked into a bar that dabbles in retail sales or a wine cellar with a drinking license-such is the level of attention this establishment renders both services. Hundreds of bottles from around the world are there for the taking, surrounded by funky-colored walls and maps of the world’s most well-known wine regions; 3rd Corner serves dinner too, and many patrons make a habit of ordering a meal and then visiting the racks to pick the wine that goes best with their food. You’ll come away with a very decent bottle of wine, and you won’t be paying an inflated price just ‘cause you’re at a restaurant.” –April 10, 2008
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Zagat Survey – 2008
“Wine lovers unite” at this “sophisticated” bistro, bar and wine shop in “funky Ocean Beach”, where they choose from a “spectacular” range of vintages and price points in “the surrounding cases” and pay “only a $5 corkage”; once a bottle is procured, a “smart staff” “helps” pair it with French small plates, which are often “large enough to share” and so “delicious”, even local “chefs drop in before bed” (it’s open till 1 AM).
Food Décor Service Cost
23 19 22 $30
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James Laube, Wine Spectator Online
July 23, 2007
“I ventured to the 3rd Corner, a wine shop, wine bar and restaurant in the Ocean Beach community of San Diego. My brother had been urging me to check it out for quite some time and it’s a cool hangout for wine lovers. The wine selections are diverse and reasonably priced. One room is devoted to whites, the other to reds, with diverse selections from around the world: California, the Priorat region of Spain, France’s Rhône region, Australia, Germany, Washington state and beyond. There were also lots of rosés. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable. A wine bar is in the middle of the store, with a reserve room behind the bar housing special bottlings. The food we had was very good: olives, grilled prawns, duck confit, sautéed scallops and clam chowder. You can dine inside among the wine racks and floor stacks or outside in the walled patio area.As a beach town crowded with surfers and sunbathers, Ocean Beach is hardly a gastronomic hotbed—although a long-time local favorite, Thee Bungalow, is right across the street from the 3rd Corner—which makes the wine shop/bar all the more alluring. It’s a wine haven in surf city.
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Tim Fish, Wine Spectator
November 16, 2006
“Earlier this year, Ed Moore sold his venerable, wine-savvy restaurant, Thee Bungalow, to focus his attention on this intriguing space across the street. Other restaurants have wine shops attached, but 3rd Corner takes it a step further: Tables are scattered around the stacks of wine, and servers spend their spare time tagging bottles with price stickers. The kitchen is tiny but creative, producing a menu of small plates such as mussels baked in white wine and a mahi-mahi with panko and jalapeño-lime aioli that rivals the best seafood in town. Best of all is the wine program—diners can order any bottle in the shop at retail price plus $5 corkage. You’ll find collector items in the wine vault behind the bar, and hundreds of selections from around the world are scattered around the shop, such as the Paul Hobbs Pinot Noir Russian River Valley 2004 ($36). It’s off the beaten path in Ocean Beach, but 3rd Corner is worth seeking out because the concept is so refreshing.”
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Matthew Lickona, The Reader
August 3, 2006
“The kids are all right – especially the kids in Ocean Beach. Ed Moore certainly thinks so. His revamped 3rd Corner Wine Shop & Bistro “wouldn’t have succeeded the way it has if it hadn’t been for the kids.” At Thee Bungalow, the restaurant across the street that Moore recently sold, “I saw some OB people. But I think that OB in general was afraid of that restaurant. That’s where you took your parents when they came to town.”
The possibility of duck confit after midnight makes the place something of a rarity in San Diego. In many parts of town, late-night dining means fast food or an all-night diner. (Not to say that either of these is an unpleasant option, just that they’re all that’s out there, and if you’re in the mood for Pinot, you may want something a little more gussied-up.) Says Moore, “I’m flabbergasted that in the Gaslamp, it turns over 100 percent to the nightclub scene, that there isn’t something beyond the basic taco shop that stays open late. There have got to be night owls there who don’t want to go to the clubs. Once they find we’re here, they love it.”
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Candice Woo, San Diego Union Tribune
April 13, 2006
“Sprinkled throughout the restaurant are racks and crates of wine. Before you sit down, wander around and pick out a bottle to open at your table. The selection is huge and diverse. There are pinot noirs from Oregon, shiraz from Australia, wines from Temecula. The prices are great, too. Most bottles are under $25, and there’s a best-buys section that features wines for as little as $8. The 3rd Corner charges an additional corkage fee of $5 to open your wine, but it’s still a bargain. After 11 p.m., corkage is free. If you don’t like your wine, just get up and get a new one. Most bottles are so inexpensive that you can take a chance on something unfamiliar and end up pleasantly surprised.
The restaurant, which serves until 1 a.m., is a cool alternative to the bar scene. The comfortable feel of the place and self-serve concept facilitate late-night conversation. If you need some food to go with all that wine, everything on the bistro’s menu is priced under $13, and portions are generous.
My favorite entree is the braised chicken with marsala. The half-chicken is plenty for sharing, although you may be reluctant to do so after your first taste of the moist, meltingly tender meat. The marsala gives the dish a rich, slightly sweet flavor that goes well with the spicy chorizo rice served alongside. The panko-crusted fish with jalapeno-lime aioli is also a good option. I had succulent mahi-mahi one night, but the fish selection changes to whatever’s fresh that day. The menu also features a cheese plate, an olive sampler and other savory bites to nibble with your wine. You can cap your night with a creme brulée, gelato or a chocolate treat, but if you prefer to drink your dessert, there are lots of sweet dessert wines just a short stroll away. “
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Marcie Rothman, City Beat
January 25, 2006
“Ocean Beach is fast becoming a hip spot for food and wine. One of my favorites for both is The 3rd Corner Wine Shop and Bistro. Owner Ed Moore’s concept is unique: retail wine store, full bar and short bistro menu. Cruise the store for a bottle, pay a $5 corkage fee and order a bite to eat with your wine. Unfinished bottles are corked and bagged for you to take home (in the trunk of your car, of course). Best of all, you can sip and nibble long after most places close as the kitchen is open until 1 a.m. The small bistro menu is what it is. Nothing fancy, nothing costing more than $13—just basics like an artisan cheese plate, olive and paté samplers, a smoked salmon plate and a very good classic whole-leaf Caesar that includes white anchovies and homemade garlic croutons with bread from Point Loma’s Con Pane bakery. Substantial dishes include well-flavored and tender short ribs with mashed potatoes, a fresh fish of the day and spicy pasta with fresh tomatoes, mushrooms and pesto all balanced with a squeeze of lemon. It hit my spot on a chilly afternoon. The prime-time weekend wait for a table can stretch to an hour or more because of limited patio, sofa and banquette seating, and no reservations are accepted. But the service is knowledgeable and attentive. I particularly love that wine is served in proper glasses similar to the Spiegelaus that you can buy there for $35 (6 in a box ).”
