Vinted In West Hartford Pairs Affordable Wines With Imaginative Food

Initially, it sounded like a bad idea: putting a wine bar in a space where one already failed in high-rent Blue Back Square in West Hartford. I never got around to trying Uncorked, so I can’t draw comparisons between it and Vinted. I can, however, talk about what Vinted appears to be doing right.

As you can see by its signage, Vinted proudly wears its origins on its sleeve, even if most Hartford area folk probably haven’t dined at the well-regarded Federal in Agawam, Massachusetts.

Bottles of wine line the walls of this “wine bar and kitchen.”

The sophisticated equipment preserves opened bottles of wine and allows for precise measurements,

making it possible to offer wines by the six-ounce glass, three-ounce half glass and one-ounce tasting pour.

Many wine bars fail price their wines accessibly—not Vinted.

When we arrive, the place is packed.

But we enjoy ourselves so much, spacing our small plates and wines for maximum enjoyment, that the place is almost empty by the time we leave.

In between those snapshots in time, we experience a whole lot of pleasure, tasting quite a few items from Vinted’s creative menu of small plates,

our waitress patiently guiding us through the experience.

We enjoy steak tartare with spicy Dijon and quail egg,

with which the kitchen supplies both toasts and housemade potato chips,

a cheese plate,

a stunningly fresh Treviso radicchio salad,

and a lovely burrata salad.

That’s “just for starters,” as they say.

There aren’t any entrées per se, but you can see that at this point our food takes a more serious turn. We chow down on seared sea scallops served over barbecued short rib with a ginger slaw,