Urban Vines is a large place in East Dallas.  They are open for lunch and dinner and offer snacks if you just want a place to drink some wine.  You enter through a patio with a large fireplace and plenty of outdoor seating into bar area that adjoins the dining area.  Some bench seating, regular tables and high top tables are available.  Tables are bare wood but cloth napkins are part of the set up.  The walls display art, some of which is for sale.  Different days offer specials and Thursday is half price wine by the glass. Two of the walls have large windows letting in some natural light in the daytime but in the evening the lighting is fairly low.  The menu offers sandwiches, flatbreads and a few bigger dishes.  Frankie and I visited a couple times to try some of the options.  It is a casual place with friendly and helpful servers and while the food is not outstanding it is a perfectly adequate place to meet with friends over wine and food.

The flatbreads are thin crust pizzas.  The Jalapeno Flatbread is made with jalapeno cream cheese spread, mozzarella, red wine onions, roasted tomatoes and crispy prosciutto.  It had a bit of spice but was not overwhelmingly hot.  Good flavors made it a fun choice.

The Steak Flatbread came with chimichurri sauce, mozzarella, skirt steak, onions, tomatoes, avocado and jalapenos.  The bits of beef were quite chewy and it was okay.

The Italian panini was composed of hard salami, capicola with mozzarella, roasted red peppers, field greens, tomatoes and roasted garlic balsamic vinaigrette on a grilled panini bread.  All paninis are served with a choice of pasta salad, pita chips or fruit.  We tried the pasta salad and it was pretty ordinary, but the sandwich was well stuffed and quite tasty with a nice crispy bread.

On a second visit, this time at lunch, we tried two other panini options – the waitress said they were the 2 top sellers.  The Turkey and Brie panini was made with oven roasted turkey, brie, cranberries and raspberry vinaigrette served on grilled panini bread.  It was well stuffed but the brie flavor dwarfed that of the the turkey.

It didn’t come together as well as the Braised Chicken and Drunken Goat Panini made with roasted tomato pesto aioli, braised chicken and drunken goat on a grilled panini bread.  Drunken Goat is a wine infused goat cheese.  It was quite good.  With the sandwiches we got pita chips which were very crisp and unseasoned.  They added a nice crunch but had a fairly dull flavor.  All paninis also came with a dill pickle that was very strongly flavored and full of juice – nice.

On the side we had a small Wedge Salad made with blue cheese dressing.  It was plenty to split and the lettuce was fresh and crisp but I found the blue cheese flavor wasn’t strong enough for me.

For dessert we had  daily special chocolate torte.  The crust was made with ground chocolate graham crackers and then that was spread with layers of dulce de leche and chocolate.  It was gooey and sweet and apparently sells out every time they make it.