Alpana

A sommelier writes the menu from the glass

Alpana Singh tastes for umami, spice and texture as Master Sommelier at Alpana in Gold Coast, Chicago, then lets the kitchen answer the wine. At her namesake restaurant, Alpana Singh holds the wine work, the ownership and the menu idea in the same hands. Her bench has never been only the cellar. She began in service as a waitress at Bakers Square and a sales clerk at Nielsen Bros. Market in Carmel, then moved through the sommelier station at Everest in Chicago and wine leadership at Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises. The credential that frames the room is Master Sommelier, but the method comes from years on floors where buying, pouring, hosting and explaining all had to meet at the table.

Alpana follows The Boarding House, Seven Lions and Terra & Vine in Singh’s restaurant lineage, while keeping her public wine work close. Her years hosting Check, Please! on WTTW/PBS placed her in front of diners as well as bottles, and Alpana Pours carried that same register into print. Here, the authority is less theatrical. She personally stocked the cellar and built a wine-inspired cuisine around the way a glass changes when it meets fat, heat, acid or spice. Butter Chicken Meatballs sit beside house-made pastas, steaks and roasted chicken; the point is not a single cuisine. It is a sommelier’s palate turned toward the pass.

Twenty-five pages and a pairing discipline

The wine list runs to 25 pages, with an international reach and a tone that allows pleasure into the technical work. Sections move from familiar ground into bottles meant for exploration, and the by-the-glass program gives the room more than a token pour: dry Riesling, Chenin Blanc, Fiano, Arneis, Gamay, Pinot Noir, Frappato and Syrah all appear in the conversation around the food. Singh’s discipline is pairing without making the table feel examined. Rich polenta with mushrooms and black truffle parmesan fonduta can move toward Pinot Noir or Arneis; short rib with red wine jus has the weight for a bolder red; sea bass and roast chicken leave room for Frappato.

The kitchen speaks in ingredients that give wine something to hold. Squid Ink Campanelle brings rock shrimp, tarragon and saffron chili butter. Pistachio Pesto Pasta and Short Rib Bucatini sit in the pasta register, while Striped Sea Bass uses celery root puree, broccolini and lemon caper sauce. The Indian note is not decorative. Butter Chicken Meatballs in garam masala tomato gravy with naan place Singh’s heritage inside the same pairing grammar as the bistro dishes. Cocktails follow the same habit of revision rather than spectacle, with a Galician White Negroni, an Orange Old Fashioned and a Tan Lines Daiquiri built as recognizable forms with one turn of the hand.

The room keeps the cellar close

The room is a chic bistro with warm lighting, vibrant decor and greenery above the tables, the kind of setting where the glassware registers before the room settles. Conversation stays present. The place has polish, and the wine program sits in the room rather than above it. A guest can come in for pasta and leave with a new grape in mind; another can read the list as the evening’s main text and still find the plate calibrated to the pour.

The pass works in a broad idiom, Italian-American in outline, international in accent, with the wine list acting as the spine. That breadth can make the menu feel restless, but it also shows the wager Singh is making: a restaurant led by a Master Sommelier does not have to become a cellar with food attached. It can be a room where Short Rib Bucatini, Butter Chicken Meatballs and a glass of Frappato all belong to the same sentence.