For many, holidays and milestones — particularly this time of year — are celebrated by firing up the grill and feasting.
As the two-year anniversary of Pintxo Wine Bar & Tapas in Canandaigua approaches, diners will soon find outdoor seating, and a small deck to savor Spanish-influenced foods hot off the grill with a glass or two of wine.
Founder and executive chef Julian Plyter actually has been grilling for the special wine dinners that were added over the past year. Outdoor grilling is an important part of the cultural experience he’s cultivating at his Coach Street restaurant, which opened May 16, 2024.
“I’m excited for our third year ahead,” Plyter said. “I’m really excited to do some outdoor cooking.”
Get ready for La Plancha at Pintxo in Canandaigua
The Canandaigua City Planning Commission gave the OK for an outdoor dining spot with 20 seats located to the east side of the building, with Commissioner Karen Serinis saying the outdoor piece “will be a nice addition to a very well-run business.”
Plyter’s outdoor food program is called La Plancha, which means to grill on plate in Spanish, and will probably start out on Fridays and Saturdays. The meats and vegetables available at market will determine what’s served, Plyter said; “whatever looks good, we’ll just do it.”
One day, it might be flank steak and asparagus vinaigrette. The next it might be charred endive and clams.
“We’ll see how it goes and what people react to,” Plyter said. “If no one is buying the pork I’m grilling, I won’t do it again. I’ll just try something else.”
Something else just might include lamb dishes, and not the tough, dry old lamb that grandma used to serve. Plyter is out to change minds.
“People think they don’t like lamb,” Plyter said. “I love cooking lamb. That’s a deeply Spanish meat. They eat lamb all over Spain.”
The menu and program enhancements are possible because Plyter said his kitchen team has been able to keep pace with the elevated restaurant menu that has evolved from “stuff to accompany wine” over the last two years.
“I think my team here is one of my greatest strengths,” said Plyter, who also praised the team that opened the place two years ago and all who worked with him along the way. “Everybody who’s with us just has a positive attitude and loves what it is we’re doing and loves why we’re here and how we do it.”
Looking back on two years at Pintxo in Canandaigua
Two years ago, Plyter admitted opening a place that featured Spanish wines in the heart of Finger Lakes wine country was a bit of a gamble, but he said people have responded well to what Pintxo is doing.
SInce opening, it’s even money that he’s had to help customers learn to pronounce the restaurant name and define it: A pintxo is a small bite and also refers to the skewer they come on. It’s pronounced “peen-cho.”
This is a sure bet: Wine people like wine, after all.
“We’ve built up a real crowd of regulars that is super thrilling to me, to resonate right here at home,” Plyter said. “It’s just been really encouraging. Achieving stability in the first year or two of a restaurant — that’s the goal.”
Here’s partly how it was done.
Popular wine dinners go over big at Pintxo in Canandaigua
In year two, Pintxo began hosting monthly wine dinners, which focused on a winemaker or a style of wine, say sparkling or sherry, or a region within Spain.
Here’s a recent example, based on a “research” trip to Spain. (“I don’t know another way to research wine,” Plyter laughed. “I’m not complaining about it at all.”)
The ticketed event seated 18 diners, and they savored six courses, starting with Plyter’s take on calçots. It’s a spring onion grown in Spain and charred in a hardwood fire and dipped in romesco sauce. This was paired with a sparkling Cava from Catalunya.
When sampling the butifarra, a kind of Catalon pork sausage, that voice inside your head is saying, “Más, por favor.”
Add in white beans with spicy Galician mussels and wood-roasted vegetables, both paired with white wines, and no one would fault diners from considering booking the next flights out of the Finger Lakes to the north of Spain.
There have been other pairing dinners, most of which sell out quickly.
“Those have been really fun,” said Plyter, who tends to cook for these. “That’s been a really, really great series for us and gives me a chance to explore some new foods.”
Pintxo’s Basque table, which is meant to honor the spirit of the Basque immigrant farmworkers who dine at big tables at farms, mostly in Idaho, also has been a popular addition.
Typically done on Saturday afternoons, up to eight guests sit at the table in front of the restaurant near the bar and enjoy family-style dining. Plyter and perhaps another guest join in on the conversations.
“We just sit and chat for a couple of hours,” Plyter said.
Good wine, good food, good vibes at Pintxo in Canandaigua
On a bustling night, everybody is talking, people are hugging each other, and everybody knows everybody. That a Pintxo culture and vibe like this have evolved organically is really gratifying, Plyter said.
A customer once described Plyter’s place as a friend’s house where you go to have a glass of wine and conversation.
“We’ve built up a real crowd of regulars that is super thrilling to me, to resonate right here at home,” Plyter said.
The popularity of the restaurant, along with neighboring Peacemaker Brewing Co. and Reason’s Bar & Grill and nearby standouts Case de Pasta and Rio Tomatlán, is helping the city realize its vision of making Coach Street a destination, according to Denise Chaapel, manager of the downtown Canandaigua Business District, a co-owner of the Pinxto building and speaker at the recent Planning Commission meeting.
The outdoor aspect will enhance that vision.
“We think it will be a wonderful addition to the vibrancy of Coach Street,” Chaapel said.
For more on Pintxo Wine Bar & Tapas in Canandaigua
Pintxo Wine Bar & Tapas is at 27 Coach St., Canandaigua. Hours are 4 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays and 4 to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. To learn more, visit https://pintxo.wine/.
Mike Murphy covers Canandaigua and other communities in Ontario County and writes the Eat, Drink and Be Murphy food and drink column. He can be reached at mmurphy@messengerpostmedia.com. Follow him on X at @MPN_MikeMurphy.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: New outdoor dining and live-fire grilling coming to popular Finger Lakes spot
Reporting by Mike Murphy, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle / Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
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