Photo By Joe Lamb

Pigall´s twist lounge & Bar

New York Magazine touts 2008 as the year of the return to “elegant little restaurants in elegant little rooms.” Obviously, someone in Cincinnati saw that coming.

Twist is Jean-Robert de Cavel´s newest venue and Fourth Street´s answer to big-city style with wine and nibbles in a setting worthy of Sex and the City. We visited Twist shortly before the holidays, and I haven´t seen so many beautiful people since my last Myrna Loy film. Dinner jackets, bare shoulders and black-clad elegance. Beautiful servers who are just this shy of polished, which is good, since this, after all, is Fourth Street and not Fifth Avenue. But there are moments when, if you squint your eyes just right, you think it might be.

The entrance to Twist is just next to Pigall´s, and on the night of our visit tinkling piano music led us up the stairs to the cocktail lounge. There´s a bar on the right, and an assortment of intimate seating arrangements on the left of the tall-ceilinged room. We chose four comfy chairs, each with a tiny side table, surrounding a central ottoman topped with a wooden tray.

I felt that the occasion called for champagne, so I ordered a glass of Jean-Robert´s Cremant, the house bubbly ($10). From the extensive wine list, my companions selected a glass of Green Point Shiraz ($8.50), a Bouges Sauvignon Blanc ($6.75) and King´s Ridge Pinot Noir ($8.25). Cheers!

Food is served from the “Petite Bite Menu,” which cautions that fingers were made before forks and hands before knives. Luckily, the napkins are substantial! I could imagine Jean-Robert developing some of these dishes for his preschool daughter as much as for wine-drinking revelers. They are playful, fanciful creations that are as fun as they are sophisticated.

Almost everything is served in threes, and each serving spoon or crostini toast is anchored to the plate with a dollop of sauce to keep it from sliding into disarray. Each morsel arrived perfectly composed on a clever square hand-blown glass plate with a cutout circle that made it easy to grasp. We decided to try as many things as we could, so we lingered and shared our small plates while we watched the elegant crowd arrive.

On our delightful server´s enthusiastic recommendation -- “The best food in the world!” -- I ordered the sophisticated take on White Castle: the Twist French Castle ($5.50). If you ever feel the need to eat slyders when you´re tipsy, go with this version: a bleu-cheese stuffed meatball with spicy mayonnaise on white toast, topped with a petite cherry tomato that´s roasted just enough to bring out its flavor without turning it to mush.

The Smoked Salmon Two Way ($7) is a sliver of smoked salmon on toast, topped with a swirl of salmon mousse and garnished with a quarter of a hard-boiled quail´s egg. Imagine a perfectly round egg the size of a nickel -- the prettiest natural garnish I´ve ever seen.

In fact, everything we ate was as pretty as it was delicious. Tiny bits of toasted walnuts were mixed into earthy goat cheese ($6.50) piped from a pastry bag onto crostini and drizzled with truffle oil. Porcelain spoons filled with crab salad ($8.50) -- real crab, of course -- with tastes of tropical fruit were arranged on a red glass plate. Puffs of pastry surrounded duck confit ($7) flavored with shitake mushrooms and garnished with tiny white slivers of pear. And the Foie Gras Mousse ($8) was absolutely exquisite, spiked with bourbon and a hint of maple sweetness from bits of dried fruit garnishing its edges. I thought the brioche was a bit too heavy for this mousse, but everything else was delightful.

We couldn´t leave without dessert, but just a bite of delicious Chocolate Mousse ($6) almost did us in. We´ll have to come back for the homemade ice cream lollipops ($5) and Pigall´s Pound Cake ($6).

There is also a Caviar and Roe service offered -- a choice of either flying fish roe, Atlantic salmon roe or Kentucky paddlefish caviar with egg mimosa (the French version of deviled eggs), lemon and toast. Guess which one is the most expensive? The Kentucky Paddlefish! At $90 for 2 ounces, we didn´t venture there. But I´ve had this delicacy before -- and I noted at the time that it was delicious. And politically correct, too, since the farm-raised paddlefish from Louisville are part of a global effort to save endangered sturgeon.

Twist is planning a cocktail menu, but it hadn´t been printed by the time we visited. I´ll be interested to see if they take mixology seriously when they do -- maybe a second visit with CityBeat´s Michael Schiaparelli is in order. Still, with its focus on wine and the artiest of nibbles, this is a top-tier night out experience. Let´s Twist again!

Pigall´s Twist lounge & Bar
Go: 129 W. Fourth St., Downtown

Call: 513-721-1345

Hours: 4-11 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 4-11:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Prices: $6.50-$8.50 for small dishes

Payment: Major credit cards

Red Meat Alternatives: Plenty

Accessibility: Fully accessible, including elevators