The Red Barrel - The best little Wine Bar in Long Beach CA that you may not know about yet.

As we reported previously we were really excited when a wine bar opened up in our neighborhood.   Having visited the Red Barrel several times now  and our love for it keeps growing (along with their selection of wines).  Our favorite Chardonnay at the Red Barrel had been the American Wine Company Chardonnay ---but now they have added one of our favorites from another great place 320 Main in Seal Beach called Snapdragon.  We got lucky enough to stumble in on Tuesday evening which is currently  All-Day Happy Hour so the Snapdragon was only $5 a glass.  We are also looking forward to someday making it in on a Friday or Saturday night when they have live musical entertainment.

The service is always excellent no matter which waitress is there.  They are all very attentive and friendly.

 The food has been outstanding each time we have gone.  The menu has expanded since our first visit and all of the new items we have tried have been great.  This time around we ordered Flatbreads.  The Italian Hawaiian was perfect and the four cheese one was tasty as well.   

Just this past Tuesday we met up with some friends and this time
we tried the Kobe Beef Sliders with Applewood Smoked Bacon andBlue Cheese, and liking the flatbreads as much as we do, we gave the Margherita Flatbread a try. We loved them both!! 

 Check out the Red Barrel and visit often….we want this place to thrive and be around for a long time.

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https://www.facebook.com/theredbarrel?fref=ts

Next time we will discuss our Guide to some  of the Wine Bars of Long Beach

Wine Adventures with the 2 Dollar Wine Connoisseurs: The View at 1900 : The shortest Wine Bar Review Ever

The View at 1900 in Long Beach

(This was the view we were looking forward to)

We got a Living Social Groupon for Easter for a good deal at a brand new wine bar in Downtown Long Beach called The View at 1900.  It looked really nice online.  It had  a  sunset view overlooking the ocean with a good menu and the new wine machines, the kinds that work when you buy a card and then sample a whole bunch of wines. So I got off extra early from work and we drove on down there only to find out that it had already shutdown. Shutdown??  But it supposedly just opened. We don’t know  why or how it just wasn’t there anymore. It had just opened in March of this year 2014 but was already closed by May of 2014, with no explanation when we tried to redeem our Groupon??

We're  wondering if the location which was in a residential apartment tower doomed it.  They probably did the Living Social Deal to build awareness---but apparently not enough people showed up?  Who knows?   

So if you have a Living Social coupon for this place get a refund now and save yourself the drive.

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Wine Adventures with the 2 Dollar Wine Connoisseurs: A New Wine Bar in our Neighborhood The Red Barrel in Long Beach

A new wine bar within walking distance from our house???  Yep it has finally happened.  A wine bar in the neighborhood that we could actually walk to.  Earlier this week a friend of ours posted a picture on Facebook from a Wine bar in Long Beach.  It turns out that it is right around the corner from our home.  So we anxiously headed over there the first chance we had to check it out.  

The place is called the Red Barrel and it is located  near the intersection of  Ximeno and Atherton in Long Beach, CA. It sits in an odd spot between a Baskin Robbins and a laundromat.  They are so new that they didn't even have permanent signage yet, but the inside is really nice and immediately makes you forget where you are.  They have nice ambiance and the decor includes wine artwork created by the owner herself, and the kind of music you would expect in a nice wine bar.  

The staff was extremely friendly. We loved our waitress Emily, she was outstanding!! Not to mention this place has some really good food. We shared a Grilled Cheese Panini with Maple bacon and a Margarita Flat bread pizza, all of the food was made fresh and did we mention it was delicious. The wine we  tried included  Black Stallion Estate -which was a 2012 Chardonnay that had a crisp apple taste to it.  We also tried a wine called American Wine Company Chardonnay from 2012, this one was from Sonoma and had the buttery taste that we love.  Both wine and food choices were exceptional and we just can't wait to go back again!! So we just wanted to spread the word and let people know about this great new place in our neck of the woods.

Up next we will talk about a really cool wine bar we visited in Seattle while up there for a wedding in fall of 2013.   Look for that soon and check out our other Wine Adventures.


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Wine Adventures with the 2 Dollar Wine Connoisseurs: Up Lounge ---Wine Down

To celebrate our anniversary this year we went to the Up Lounge.  It is a part of the Sky Room in downtown Long Beach.  The Up Lounge definitely didn’t live up to our expectations.   We had wanted to go here for several years, so when our anniversary came around we decided to meet a couple of friends that were also celebrating their anniversary .  The entrance to the Sky Room is on the side of the Breakers building which is basically an old folk’s home.   Everything about the building said old (1930’s old) .   The ground floor entrance lead  down a haunted hallway past old photos and memorabilia of the early days of Long Beach.   

 The elevator to go up to the Sky Room looked like it was straight out of the Tower of Terror ride at Disney’s California Adventure.   The Sky Room itself looked nice  (though our friends that actually ate there said the food wasn’t as good as they had hoped for the price).   The Up Lounge was up some narrow old staircase that seemed straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie (Vertigo anyone?)

 I can’t even imagine how drunken people make their way safely back down after a couple of cocktails.  The Up Lounge  nothing like what we expected.  We thought it was going to be this fancy rooftop are overlooking the harbor.  We choose this place based on the website because of the food menu that featured Flat breads and cheese platters.  When we asked for the menu once up there the online menu didn’t really exist.   That menu is actually for the Wine down Lounge at the bottom of the building and if you wanted wine at the UP Lounge you needed to go back down the dangerous stairs and get it from the Sky room.   Even though it had a view of the ocean, it was cold and had no wine or food as advertised.  So we just meet up with our friends and headed down to the bottom floor via the Haunted Elevator.  The Elevator emptied  out  into the old 1930’s lobby of the Retirement home.  There was a cool old amusement park model that we wanted to check out ---but we were chased away quickly by angry nurses.   So we made our way to the  The Wine Down Lounge  which was completely empty when we entered at 8:30pm on a Friday night.   We ordered some wine and hung out with our friends and ordered a 5 cheese plate which was actually really good salvaging the evening.  The bartender there actually was someone who used to take my dad's backpacking classes at Long Beach City College and so we hung out and listened to some of his stories.    I'd recommend the Wine Down Lounge (although it was so empty) because the cheese platter was so good.   The Up Lounge.......NOT SO MUCH>