Ugo an Italian Wine Bar

Preface:  So I must confess I have a real problem with this whole blogging thing.  My problem being that everytime I go out and get tasty, blog worthy food, I forget to take a picture and so my friends for todays entry you will see a bunch of half eaten dishes.  My apologies.

Ugo an Italian Wine Bar
So last week my good friend Aaron and I came over to Ugo because we hadn't been here before.  For those of you who ALSO haven't been here let me fill you in.  The wine bar, on Cardiff Ave in Culver City, is a little tiny bar that has little circular islands of wine.  You go to main bar and give the bartender whatever amount of cash you would like to put on your new Ugo debit card.  You take that card, and hopefully the wine glass they handed you, to one of these islands and insert it into a designated slot.  Each bottle of wine has a digital display of a price above the bottle ranging from $0.78 to upwards of $10.  That quantity indicates the price per 1 oz pour, you put your glass under the spout and press the button.  Ta-da!  You have now done Ugo wine bar.  Keep in mind this is an Italian wine bar, so odds are you won't know any of these wines and will basically have to chose which wines to taste based on price and the short descriptions about each bottle.

On with the story so after ten dollars worth of 1oz pours and pizza we split we decided we would return next week for happy hour and split a bottle.  Ugo, for your information, happens to be within walking distance of my place ergo splitting a bottle isn't too risky.  When we came for our bottle I realized it was DineLA and of course ordered food as well!  After we ordered they brought us some sliced bread with little pour bottles of olive oil and balsamic.  Which was nice....except there was no where to pour the olive oil and balsamic except for our bread plates.  Independently we both attempted this maneuver but since they act like oh I dunno oil and water, when you pour them both in one small area of a larger plate, the balsamic literally slides out from under the oil and separates itself.  Annoying but we made due.  I ordered a trio of crustini for my appetizer, one eggplant, one mushroom and one caramelized onions and prosciutto (not picture...I ate them too fast.)  These were actually pretty good, not the most amazing thing ever created but the sweet caramelized onions with the salty prosciutto was to die for.  Too bad it was only two bits. 

For my entree I order a fried risotto cake with cheese in a marinara sauce. At least I remembered to take a picture this time.  So these were actually really good.  Aaron got the rack of lamb and personally I think I made the better choice.  They were basically risotto with seasonings that appear to be pan fried on top of this melty mozzarella cheese.  I ate all of it!  Unfortunately as I am writing this is has come to my attention that nothing even resembling this is on their menu online so you will have to go to Ugo and check it out for yourself.  I really liked this dish however my draw back was the size.  These little fried medallions are somewhere between the size of a golf ball and tennis ball.  A racquetball maybe!  Anyway, they're not very big, but thankfully we had a nice little basket of bread to help fill me up.

That was until dessert arrive.  Chocolate mousse cake, described as the perfect balance between mousse and cake.  And it was!!  It was large and it was really really good.   I like that it was 50/50 mousse and cake and very delicate.  I also like that it was topped with a thin wedge of chocolate on top cut the same shape as the cake.

All in all I would say 3.5 points.  It was pretty good, I didnt dislike anything, but nothing really stood out as "really good", let alone "I have to come back and have this again" I wont come back for the food food, but I will come back for wine and the happy hour specials.

***Side note the week before we shared the happy hour pizza which was a nice sized pizza with prosciutto, shaved parmesean and arugula.  VERY GOOD****