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Four years ago, Jake Hafner, then owner of 33 Wine Shop & Tasting Bar, sent out a long, heartfelt, and entertaining letter to his customers informing them he was selling the bar to Jeff Stettner. (Hafner, featured in an SLM Q&A here, later announced he was pursuing another passion--beer--and in mid-2011 opened The Civil Life Brewing Company.)
Stettner sent out a similar letter yesterday, burying the lede in a three-page communiqué. I'll follow that same format...
Jake Hafner had cobbled together the perfect wine bar, 8 tables small with a 10-seat bar, and a dandy patio out back that welcomed patrons, and in keeping with the lack of pretension, their dogs, too. The fact that 33 had zero signage (below) never seemed to matter. Unless you were a first-time wine deliveryman.
I didn’t know Stettner at the time, but I knew Jake, liked Jake, really liked the whimsical and unpompous way he described wines, and trusted his judgment implicitly, so if he was fine with this Stettner guy, so was I.
In retrospect, Hafner made a good decision. Not long after he took over--and no doubt after ample refreshment--chef Kirk Warner boasted to Stettner he "could cook a gourmet meal using a hot plate and a blowtorch." In doing so, he unwittingly birthed the now legendary series of "Dorm Room" dinners, where once a month a guest chef cooks a five-course meal using only cooking equipment found in the standard dorm room. Now almost four years later, the city's best chefs are still lining up for the opportunity to take that challenge and Dorm Room (a steal at $35 pp) remains one of the toughest dining tickets in town. (Some of the earlier dinners are chronicled here and here.)
Over his stewardship, as he refers to it, Stettner increased the already weighty wine list from 16 pages to 20; the beer and spirits offerings remained numerous and cutting edge. Business increased, new friends were made. Another night at the bar, this one not long ago, while chatting up fellow scribe Ian Froeb, he and I both admitted to often being overwhelmed by 33's lists, reverting to asking Stettner to "just pour us something we'll like," which he could handily do since, as he remarked in his letter, libations were often ordered with specific customers in mind.
In the news just last week, 33 was among four local wine bars given a shout-out by Wine Enthusiast magazine in its March issue.
Then yesterday, a very Hafner-esque letter hits my emailbox: same message, different author.
In it, Stettner announced he was selling the bar to Lafayette neighbor, friend, and second level certified sommelier James Smallwood and that he'll stay on for an indefinite period to ease the transition. Like any good barkeep telling a story, his letter took a few breezy twists and turns ("rambling," as he self-deprecatingly put it) setting up the punch line, many of them hitting close to home for anyone who'sdone any time in the hospitality industry.
Not long after his acquisition of 33, Stettner and his wife JJ celebrated the birth of their first child, Jordan, a lad who Stettner, a man with many friends, called "my best friend." Feeling the need to spend more time with his best friend (father and son at left) prompted the decision to part ways with his less animate one.
Enter James Smallwood.
I just met the man the other night, a couple of guys with Econ degrees that somehow ended up in the restaurant/bar business. I'm sure he has minor tweaks planned for 33--like what to do with that side room--but that's a subject for another day, another glass of wine, another Dorm Room dinner.
