I have belonged to a men’s dinner club for about thirty years now.  Once a year three members pick up the restaurant and bar tab for all the members that show up for a meeting.  If you amortize it, it works about the same as if we all did Dutch Treat dinners, but not nearly as interesting.   When I first joined the group, there were many members from the Grosse Pointes of the Detroit area.  For years this was and still has some of the grandest homes that belonged to the early titans of industry.  I was always curious why with all the members from the Pointes we didn’t have any meetings in any restaurants from the Pointes.  I was informed that restaurants never did well there, because everyone belonged to one of the private clubs, so why go to a public restaurant.

That was then, this is now and there is a wonderful restaurant called The Hill.  “The Hill” was a section of the Pointes that the locals have just called the six or seven block strip of retail, and now restaurants.  The Hill does a stellar job feeding the locals as well as those who may travel an hour or so just to dine at their tables.

They have wonderful sea food dishes, but they also do not neglect the red meat carnivore.  It was the wine list that made go back and back for a dining pleasure.  They were featuring a lot of the wines that I had discovered on our trip to Napa Valley and they would trumpet their “finds” announcing when the winery was founded.  There was Grgich Hills, Duckhorn, Cakebread, Cain and Caymus; all great wineries and at the time newcomers to the shores of Detroit.  They also carried two of the second labels that I had discussed during another visit.  They featured Carruades de Lafite and Les Forts de Latour both from the Commune of Pauillac.

They may have been a late comer to the ranks of restaurants in the Detroit area, especially in the Pointes, but they did the proper homework for quality cuisine and a tight but well chosen wine carte.