Wine and Panini:  The Spot

By Neil Schlosser
Contributing Writer

The Spot is a wine and panini restaurant in downtown Fergus Falls that serves up a good sandwich, has a large beer and wine selection, and some friendly and hot wait staff.

Let us start with the interior. It is an earth tone clay color, deep and rich with undertones of orange. Red hardwood tables fill most of the open space and a few overstuffed couches are in a corner near the kitchen. All of it looked okay but it was not original and said nothing about the owners. The interior is devoid of personality. The paint is generic. Variations of that color show up in other restaurants that serve food more appropriate to images the color evokes. Yes, they serve paninis, which are Italian, and that color can be construed as Mediterranean but nothing else in the restaurant evoked images of Italy, so that argument has little weight. The furniture suffers the same problem. It’s nice but generic so paired with a bland paint job, it merely suffices, not adds to the atmosphere. Since the base of the atmosphere is without personality, the additions of local art work and farm themed murals, which are all nice and appreciated, just heighten the disjointedness of the interior.

The waitress was a friendly, tattooed woman. She had a fun personality and actually made the experience more memorable as my friends and I all sat wondering why she wasn’t our friend.  Her coworker was a bearded male who was beautiful in an unconventional way. I drooled over him while my friends drooled over her. We commiserated our lack of game skills over dollar coffee. The dollar coffee is unique in that it was in fact a dollar, there were free refills, and the coffee was decent. There is only one place in the area that I’ve been to that also serves a dollar cup of coffee. It made our empty longing seem not as empty. 

The menu is one of panini and wine with average wine by glass prices hovering around $5 and $20 for a bottle. There is also a large selection of beer. The food is in the $7 range and included either kettle chips or a tomato Italian salad which is Italian dressing over tomatoes. I had half a Muffuletta and a crab and corn soup and my friends had the Le Lido and Monte Cristo. The sandwiches were good; they had flavor and all the ingredients played together well. The Monte Cristo was prepared exceptionally well and it was served with a jam sauce on the side and sprinkled with powdered sugar. The soup was watery, salty, had an overpowering crab flavor, and based on the look of the ingredients, I suspect the soup was overcooked. The desserts are not homemade so they are very routine.

The Spot was not perfect but they nailed what they needed to nail, namely the sandwiches.  There is room to improve but they got the sandwiches right and a dollar cup of coffee in the heart of downtown Fergus Falls … hell, anywhere, is unbeatable. 

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IF You GO:

What:The Spot Wine Bar
Where: 220 W. Lincoln Ave.; Fergus Falls, MN
Info: 218-998-2551 or http://thespotwinebar.com/