Nectar

Tuesday June 12
No, we weren't sipping it for dinner, like gods or hummingbirds. Nectar is a restaurant run by a local chef, Julie Francis. We often meet her at the Farmer's Market, near Nancy's Shadygrove Farm stall; while we buy our little baggie of something, she trundles away a bushel of chives. As both she and we are fans of local produce, we felt we should go to her restaurant and see what she was doing with it.
Nectar is in Mount Lookout Square. Almost everyplace in Cincinnati is called Mount Something, but this locale's name is particularly inapposite, as it's in a hollow, and only looks out on the other side of the street. But the inside of the restaurant is warm-colored and woody (if a bit too resonant - you can hear everyone's conversations except your own). We could see Julie laboring at the stove through the broad kitchen pass-through at the back.
For starters, we had one plate of tender little calamari in a Spanish fantasy of aioli, chorizo, and romesco sauce, and a fine tuna tartare - the raw tuna in succulent chunks and wearing a hat of avocado purée, lettuce, and saffron threads, drizzled with ginger-miso vinaigrette.
Our main courses were a nice spiced duck breast with green tea soba noodles and braised Asian greens, and tasty coriander-coated slices of leg of lamb, with cannellini and local turnips and beets; the roasted beet greens sopping up the sauce at the bottom were particularly memorable.
Nectar's wine list is small but full of excellent, unusual choices, and with very little markup. We immediately pounced on the 2006 Conclass, the same wine Tom brought for our not-so-fat Tuesday dinner; and later, keeping with the Spanish theme, had a glass of the 2004 Tomas Cusine "Vilosell" (Costers del Segre), which harmonized well with the lamb. It was meaty, rich, long-lasting, and threw a sediment like a raisin-pie, a feature which shows up in some Côtes de Rhône and Provençal wines we're fond of.
So next time we see Julie at the Farmer's Market, we will tell her that we like her attitude, her restaurant, and her food - particularly the beet greens.