Wichita wine bar, playfully dubbed ‘QuikTrip of wine,’ also offers ‘choc-uterie’ boards
I’m a big fan of charcuterie boards — slabs of wood laden with piles of cured meats, gourmet cheeses, nuts and fruit — and I’ve even become a bit of a charcuterie artist over the last couple of years.
But an item on the menu at the new Alzavino Wine Tavern at 1001 W. Douglas in Delano does a traditional charcuterie board one better.
It’s a “choc-uterie” board, and instead of meat and cheese, it’s laden with handmade local chocolate bars, grapes, graham crackers, pretzels and a melty chocolate S’mores dip covered with toasted marshmallows.
But the star of the bard is the handmade chocolate, which is produced locally by a growing Wichita business called Lovie & Co. Owned by Kristin Dexter-VonOot, the business produces gourmet white and dark chocolate bars spiked with herbs, dried fruit and nuts. Dexter-VonOot also has her own line of roasted coffee and seasonal hot cocoa bombs.
Dexter-VonOot said she started the business in 2019, spurred on by relatives who said they loved her cooking. At first, she sold not only chocolate but also spice mixes, smoked salts, and extracts.
Her business was starting to take off when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, so she used the down time to research and fine-tune her passion, which is making chocolate. When the world started to open back up, she said, she approached Janelle King at The Workroom and asked if she’d be interested in carrying her chocolate.
She then started getting her chocolate on more and more local store shelves, and it’s now available by the bar at places like Urban Interiors, Sunflower Espresso, Clifton Collective and La Vie Boheme. Lovie & Co. Coffee is available at Marketplace 67010 in Augusta and at Tamsyn’s Gallery in Old Town Square.
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It was when her business was first getting off the ground, Dexter-VonOot said, that she met Alzavino co-owner Danielle Harmon, who at that time was still developing her own business idea. The women stayed in touch, and when Harmon was finally ready to open her wine bar, which also carries local retail products, she reconnected with Dexter-VonOot.
The choc-uterie boards are now a permanent — and popular — part of Alzavino’s menu, which also includes meat-and-cheese charcuterie boards, a fruit-and-cheese platter, various flatbreads, hummus, and a melty cheese dip with sausage.
Dexter-VonOot makes big slabs of chocolate for Alzavino, and her recipes are studded with things like raspberries, orange slices, lavender and rosemary. The kitchen breaks up the bars and places them on the boards alongside mini palmiers made by Bagatelle Bakery plus the melted chocolate, graham crackers, grapes and pretzels. (Individual Lovie & Co. chocolate bars are also for sale at the shop.)
Harmon said her kitchen has also gotten creative with other seasonal dessert trays and recently offered a limited time “pump-cuterie” tray that featured a cold, creamy pumpkin dip. Other seasonal dessert boards and flatbreads will be coming in the future, she said.
New at Alzavino: Wine dinners
Alzavino, which opened in early September, has exceeded the owners’ expectations, said Harmon, who started the bar with her husband, Ken.
It’s unique because it offers a special machine that dispenses various wines by the ounce, and customers fill their own glasses using pre-paid cards. Regulars have playfully called the business the “Dave & Buster’s of wine” and the “QuikTrip of wine,” Harmon said.
“It’s going over very well, and that’s so exciting because it’s a new concept and you just don’t know: Is this going to be well received?’” she said.
The Harmons will soon be offering their first wine dinner. Though they haven’t put tickets for sale or finalized a price, the first one will be on Nov. 15 and will feature Veritas wines out of Kansas City.
The dinners will all feature four-course dinners with four wine pairings. Harmon said tickets should be available by next week at alzavinowinetavern.com and at www.facebook.com/alzavinowinetavern. Each dinner will be limited to 60 people, and the second one will likely happen in February, Harmon said.
The daily hours for Alzavino are 3 to 10 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 3 to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 3 to 9 p.m. Sundays.
This story was originally published October 21, 2021 at 2:35 PM.
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