Mardi

by Brad Rhines

The restaurant boom on Freret St. has come full circle, as the young restaurants have now been around just long enough to start opening establishments within themselves. Over the weekend, Dat Dog left some extra room for the NOLA Pie Guy. Just down the street, Company Burger will pair up with Magazine St. wine shop, Carte des Vins, for a wine-and-food fête tomorrow night called BTG.

Company Burger owner and chef Adam Biderman will be hosting his old friend Joe Briand, who manages the Magazine Street wine shop Carte Des Vins. Naming their venture after the food industry acronym for "By the Glass," the two want to bring a wine bar experience to Freret Street, where customers can explore new, interesting wines while snacking on creations from the kitchen. 

Biderman and Briand both made their bones at Herbsaint, where Biderman cooked and Briand waited tables before working his way up to an executive position managing the wine program for Chef Donald Link’s restaurant group.

Carte Des Vins gives Briand the chance to talk, taste, and sell wines, but it doesn’t allow him to actually spend time with the folks drinking and enjoying his wines. For his part, Biderman has been wildly successful at Company Burger, but the pop-up concept gives him the opportunity to branch out beyond burgers and get back to his upscale roots.

“Really, the whole idea,” Biderman told NoDef, “is to have a really cool, super-intense wine bar in the burger joint.”

Just don’t come expecting burgers, warns Biderman. He said the food will be “totally off-the-menu,” not exactly paired with the wines, but prepared to hit “certain notes,” like earthy flavors that might work well with a French white.

“The idea behind this is a bad-ass joint where you can come in and get a great glass of progressive French wine that may not be able to find anywhere else, be exposed to something different, have a fun time doing it, and then have a couple of things to eat,” said Biderman.

“There are very few rules,” he added. “The only rules are bad-ass wine, great food, fun people.”

While some pop-ups around town are operating on a regular weekly schedule, the Company Burger wine bar will be a little more sporadic. After the initial run on Tuesday, Biderman says they’ll try to figure out how to keep it going past the holidays and hope to open up twice a month or so for the near future.

The vino starts flowing at 7 p.m.