Cuvee Bistro

What a great place! Our waiter, Brady, was superb. Great wine list too. We split the spinach salad which featured a warm bacon vinaigrette with roasted peppers and goat cheese. I had the black pepper seared tuna over braised spinach. The fish was perfectly cooked and very high quality. My companion had the Grouper Vince - pecan crusted with a honey Worcestershire sauce - over mashed potato cakes. While my entree was great, the grouper was out of this world. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. We were told the entree got its name after country singer Vince Gill raved about it when the Chef catered his wedding. For dessert, we shared the key lime pie, which was a nice ending to a great meal.

Very Nice! I have been to a lot of places and enjoyed some amazing service, food and wine, Cuvée Bistro was an amazing place to find in NW Florida. I will be back and I will tell my friends!

Eh...

I read reviews about this restaurant before my friends and I went. I'm glad I did because I was able to know what to expect on both pricing and attire.  When we walked in it was about 8p on a Saturday and it was pretty crowded. I later discovered that's because of their infamous happy hour that lasts until 9p. Their drinks (mostly) and appetizers are half off. Martini's are 5 dollars. We put our names in for a table of 4 and had a half hour way. Considering the size of the place (relatively small), that we had 4, and it was a weekend during "prime dinner hours" in the summer (aka tourist season) I was surprised that wait was only 30 minutes! The happy hour was awesome if you are lucky enough (like we were) to get a seat. There's also live music which was great and really brought the place to life. The crowd is definitely older I'd say 45-55 on average and very much a cougar/WASP hang out. I'm relatively young and felt like a piece of meat from the moment I walked in the door.

Moving on to dinner: so we get seated and I have to say the whole experience took a turn south :( First we sit down and they didn't have the menus ready. Okay so we had to wait a couple minutes for those. Not a big deal I guess just weird. Typically you're seated and handed menus.  So we get our menus and the waiter asks if we have any questions. We don't, however, my friend wants to order and appetizer and then decide on her meal. Our waiter was not having that. He said we need to put all of our orders in at the same time. Okay Mr. Bossy 1) I've been to and worked in restaurants before, uh no you don't. Appetizers go first and 2) are you kidding me? Okay then! He brought over the bread and when we were finished with that he asked if we wanted more. I said yes and he said okay and took my plate away and never came back with any :( I think the bread was the best thing I had! I ordered a bowl of their seafood bisque. For "fine dining", the price, and location (we live on the panhandle aka coast) this was as good as Campbell's soup would have been. Wow $9 for a bowl. I could have bought 3 cans of Campbell's soup for that! A few more times the waiter was rude, my silverware was dirty, the food was blah at best, especially for what I paid! I'm a local and I won't be returning. Maybe someone could convince me to go for happy hour, MAYBE.