Looking for a quiet evening with a glass of wine? The Camel City Cafe is a polished wine bar and restaurant that caters to the Winston-Salem Symphony crowd, the local professionals and any Wake Students seeking a fine red or white.

The cafe is a hybrid between a bar and a restaurant – while it serves food, it maintains a separate bar scene that is effectively a whole other venue. You could spend the entire evening at the bar, and while that’s technically true of any restaurant, this place gives you a legitimate reason to do so.

Camel City Cafe is tucked into the Stevens Center, conveniently located right in the middle of downtown Winston-Salem on the corner of West Fourth and Marshall. The atmosphere is quiet (the architecture keeps acoustics in mind), pleasantly dim (incandescent lights are mostly low-level) and casual (you’d be fine in a button-down and slacks or even nice jeans for the ladies).

The seating is comfortable and the booths are high-backed enough for intimate conversation. Silver is of good quality and you’ll be cutting your steak with a bone-handled knife. The glassware is cool – post-modern ergonomic water glasses, fine wine stemware, sturdy steins for beer and of course different cocktail glasses depending on what your poison is.

The wine, beer and dinner menu comes neatly snapped into a binder and it has a table of contents so you won’t have to flip through it to find what you want. This also makes it easier for the staff to swap menu sheets, as the menu rotates seasonally. Weather permitting, you can dine on the patio and take in the downtown scene as well.

Camel City’s wine list boasts more than 150 wines. To make things even more diner-friendly, each entree on the menu is accompanied by two wine recommendations. And if you’d like to try a different glass with your meal, your server is ready with further options – things like special bottles and recent additions to the repertoire.

Apart from the restaurant, Camel City hosts an in-house tasting on the third Wednesday of each month. Just $20 will allow you to see live music, enjoy some great appetizers and sample 30 different wines, which vary by month.

The cafe has an impressive beer selection as well. It goes heavy on the imports, especially German ones. The wait staff is just as knowledgeable here as they are on the wine. They could give you a short history of each featured brew – my strong German beer went very well with my entree, and I owe my waiter for that.

The meal was excellent. Camel City has embraced the Tapas trend that discerning restaurants are favoring. Tapas are smaller versions of a restaurant’s entrees, and you order several of them. If you’re looking to sample the main dishes, this is for you.

Being a thorough reviewer, I decided that it was necessary to order the barbeque shrimp appetizer (these are the kinds of sacrifices I make for this job every day). They were delicious, with a mild start and a spicy finish, and were presented beautifully, served on top of toast points and sauteed spinach and drizzled with just the right amount of butter.

For the main course, I had the tapas dish- (what else?) – ($26.95) choosing the duck, filet, and salmon. Before I even began eating, the chef won me over a little with the presentation.

The attention to detail was impressive and clearly showed a dedicated hand. Each dish (served in a large white ceramic plate-cum-bowl) was accompanied by seperate side dishes that complemented the meat and neatly separated from its counterparts.

The duck was tender, flavorful and complimented by its sweet sauce. The filet was slightly less impressive, but still within my expectations. The salmon was tender and cooked to flaky perfection. I had no trouble jumping from dish to dish because the waiter had graciously provided me with a beer strong and flavorful enough (see previous comments) to cleanse the palette between bites.

Camel City is great for an evening at the wine bar, a first date (or date function), a romantic evening or just a pleasant night consisting of a few drinks and some television. It is a little on the pricier side (entrees run from $20 to around $30; wine starts at around $7 per glass), but the bar and the food are worth it. The Triad Business Journal gave it four stars, and I’m very inclined to agree.