By David Oliver

Educating yourself about wine can be a daunting task. First, it’s a very complicated subject concerning numerous grapes, countries, climates, winemaking styles and techniques. Second, there are so many sources ranging from books and magazines to web sites and blogs. You can read and study all you want, but the chances are that knowledge will not start clicking into place until you taste.

There are good options when it comes to tasting wine. Most restaurants offer a good variety of wines by the glass. There a number of fine wine bars in the area that have a large number of wines available by the glass or by the flight. (A flight is a group of usually three or four wines served in smaller portions at the same time. The combined volume is normally about the same as a full glass.) The option that many may not consider is organizing your own private tasting. This allows you and your friends to decide on a theme and explore wines that may not be available by the glass at your local watering hole.

By Tom Jensen

There are good restaurants and there are great restaurants. Most of which is a matter of opinion. But where it gets tricky is when you ask 100 people their opinion of a particular restaurant, for example, and 98 percent say the restaurant is great. Does this make it great? If I can’t stand to eat Ethiopian food and my friends and I go out to eat at an Ethiopian restaurant and half of them say the food was just O.K., does that mean the restaurant is just O.K.? Oh and for the record, I love Ethiopian food. Any chance I get to go out to eat, sit on the floor, eat with my hands using tiny little pancakes to scoop outrageously flavorful food, I am in. My point is, many of us hold on to other peoples’ opinions of a restaurant because these are the people we trust and we may have similar interests with. My goal is to wipe the opinion slate clean and venture out and visit restaurants that create a unique environment, interesting menu options, and service that exceeds ones expectations. And guess what…I found it at Victoria’s in Appleton.

Chris Victoria started out in L.A. as a dishwasher and pretty much did everything an aspiring restaurateur would do, eventually working his way up to management. After being taught how to create some very unique Italian dishes, Chris and his brothers ventured out on their own. During the early 1980’s, Chris had a daring idea to open a location in the Fox Cities. On March 15th, 1986 his dream came true and today Chris and his wife Liz are proud of the long journey.

What is Slow Food? Well here is Wikipedia’s definition.  Slow Food is an international movement founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986. It strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine and promotes farming of plants, seeds and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem. It was the first established part of the broader Slow movement. The movement has since expanded globally to over 100,000 members in 132 countries.

As a broad explanation the above definition works fine I guess, but this story goes much deeper. To understand slow food you also need to understand that while it does involve cooking methods in which foods are cooked slow and low, that is for a long period of time at a low temperature.  It is not about slow food literally! 

Slow Food itself is a philosophy adopted by like minded people that believe in the preservation of tradition and the proper procurement and care of ingredients.  This philosophy involves buying from local produces, farmers and artisans who practice natural sustainably production and farming methods.