In its 19th year, Providence stands with a select few in the upper echelon of fine dining in Los Angeles. The iconic Hollywood restaurant, which offers a sophisticated, seafood-focused tasting menu, has held a Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence for its wine list since 2016.
It’s perhaps no coincidence that Providence earned its first Restaurant Award after wine director David Osenbach joined in 2015, growing the wine program into an 800-bottle selection. But before coordinating wine lists, Osenbach earned degrees in music composition and conducting from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. During his college years, he worked at restaurants and eventually changed his tune, attending the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.
After graduating, he landed a job working for Hans Röckenwagner’s eponymous restaurant in Santa Monica, where he also took care of the wine and beverage program. He then took a general manager and wine director position at Josie, also in Santa Monica, where he stayed for 10 years before joining Providence.
Providence chef Michael Cimarusti is known for his embrace of wild-caught and sustainable seafood, such as California spiny lobster, and produce from nearby farms and purveyors. Adapting to what’s available throughout each season, Cimarusti makes frequent tweaks to the dishes on his eight-course tasting menu, which keeps Osenbach on his toes. But the changing menu also breeds a thoughtful and deep wine list, with trendy wine offerings, well-trod classics and rare treasures. To help enhance the staff’s knowledge. Osenbach organizes regular wine classes, open to anyone from the waitstaff to the cooks.
Wine Spectator senior editor Aaron Romano sat down with Osenbach to discuss how a well-educated staff benefits Providence’s guests, how he stays ahead of the game when the menu changes and which wine pairing he turns to when he’s otherwise stumped.
Wine Spectator: How did your interest in wine begin?
David Osenbach: We definitely weren’t a wine family growing up. There was maybe a jug of Hearty Burgundy in the liquor cabinet in case company came over, and probably some salty cooking Sherry in the pantry, but that’s about it. The first time I got really excited about wine was when I took a wine class at the CIA, and then the whole world opened up to me. When I interviewed for my first front-of-the-house job after cooking school, I fortunately—and bravely—answered “yes” to the question, “Do you know anything about wine?” And the rest is history.
I think wine appeals to me because it uses both sides of your brain. There’s so much technical data, theory, history, chemistry, etc., involved, but then there’s a whole creative world with regard to winemaking and pairing wine and food that really excites me.
What approach do you take in creating Providence’s wine list?
We essentially have one eight-course tasting menu, and most of the wine that we sell, at least in terms of volume, is in the form of a wine pairing. I could easily make a list with wines that pair perfectly with those eight dishes and be done with it. However, I also want to ensure the list has plenty of great bottles from around the world. The menu is predominantly seafood, so we have quite a bit of white wine—California, France, Germany, Austria, etc.—plus a large red Burgundy selection and plenty of fish-friendly reds. Italy is a great place to go for red wines with seafood: Sicily, Liguria and Amalfi Coast.
That being said, our philosophy here is being able to drink what you like. I try to have a variety of new and interesting things to discover if you’re feeling adventurous, mixed in with some classics and more familiar names if you just want to relax and have a nice bottle of, say, big, bold, rich Napa Cab. Will it be the textbook perfect match with your oysters? Maybe not, but if you love it and leave happy, I will be too.
How do you keep the list current, exciting and on top of trends, with options for any guests that come in?
We attract adventurous diners and excited wine drinkers. They’ll often tell me what they like and what they’re drinking, and ask, “Oh, do you have this?” And if I don’t, I should probably get some! I also just like to go out and eat and drink to see what other restaurants are doing, and see what’s popular.
Because we have a range of locals who dine at the restaurant, they have certain expectations of what they’d like to see on a wine list, and I want them to keep coming back. For others, it may be their big dining experience while visiting California. So, we keep the California section pretty well represented.
What categories of wine on Providence’s list are you trying to expand?
I’m always trying to find older vintages because I feel that if everything on a wine list is 2021 or 2022, then there’s a feeling of, okay, what have you guys been doing?
I don’t think people necessarily see Providence as a destination to see the wine list. It’s about the interesting meal that they’re about to have, not a place to come because Providence is that place that has a whole bunch of Bordeaux from the ’40s. From time to time, we have that [mature Bordeaux], and some older Spanish wines or Barolo. [But older wines are] just harder to find and at a price point that you can sell at a restaurant and make it worth it for everybody. It’s not something that flies off the shelf.
How do you plan pairings for a frequently changing food menu?
I’ve gotten into this “plan ahead strategy.” I’ll taste wines and think this wine will be delicious on a pairing someday, and I’ll buy two or three cases of it. And then my assistant suddenly gets very upset and asks, “Why do we need another Assyrtiko?” And I’ll say, “Trust me, one of these days, we’ll need it!”
This is good in encouraging the changing of the pairing because, if it’s a wine I bought a couple of months ago, when I try to order more, it’s already sold out. There are also days when I go to the wine cellar, and I look at the rack with all the by-the-glass and pairing lines, [and I think] ‘I hate everything here; we’re going to change.’ I always have a secret little stash of things to play around with.
The kitchen is extraordinarily supportive in terms of when they are changing a dish. But there are always those times when it’s 4:30 p.m. on a Thursday, and they say, “Oh, yeah, we changed this dish.” The pairings change almost as often as, if not more frequently than, the menu itself. Because the menu never goes through a big change completely. It’s more that a dish will slowly change and then become something new, and then this other dish will slowly change.
You have to look at [the pairing menu] dynamically and think, well, this is a perfect pairing with this dish—but maybe it won’t go well after the wine that came before it. You have to remember what’s coming next. You run the risk of wines that all kind of taste the same, even though they’re excellent pairings. That’s a fun little puzzle to put together.
What’s your go-to wine pairing?
I’ll always reach for Riesling if I’m in a bind. There’s something about that balance of fruit and acidity that plays well with food. Plus, I love it any time we work with shellfish. Chef Michael’s dishes are complex, but the flavors are always very precise. I love to pair a Kabinett Riesling with our salt-roasted Santa Barbara spot prawns when they’re in season. The prawns are quickly roasted at 500 degrees and served with salt scented with rosemary, and the meat is so sweet it’s almost like candy.
What’s a surprise wine pairing?
I’m pairing a 90-day skin-contact Ribolla Gialla with grilled vermilion rockfish with matsutake and a carrot broth. I think orange wines are great candidates for pairings because they often have so many savory notes and layers of flavors. Plus, the slightly heavier texture works well since this dish comes later in the tasting menu.
How did the voluntary wine classes for the staff get started?
It was actually some of the guys from the kitchen who came to me because they wanted to take the level one sommelier exam. And I said, why don’t you guys come in and we’ll talk about some stuff? So, two guys showed up the first week. A third person showed up the next time, and then one of the food runners showed up. And then the bartender came. Then we had two more food runners, and then it just kind of grew.
How have the wine classes benefited Providence’s staff and guests?
There are only two of us in the wine department on the floor at any point, so the servers, captains and front waiters are often responsible for pouring the wine pairings. There’s only so much that you can do in the 10 to 15 minutes that you get before service starts where it’s, ‘Okay, here’s this new wine, and it’s from here, and here’s a map and now let’s talk about food.’ These [classes] are a little more in-depth. We’re not necessarily talking about the wines we’re selling but about wine in general. I realized [the staff] could often rattle off all the facts, but they had absolutely no idea how it fits into the rest of the wine world. So, we started back at the basics.
One interesting thing was that the guys from the kitchen doing tastings at these classes had an expanded vocabulary of what they were smelling and tasting in the wines because they were used to dealing with all these products. They know what quince smells like or what fig leaves smell like. Whereas people who don’t have a kitchen background don’t. So, then we go back into the kitchen and grab the quince. That interaction is cool.
I always like to taste things that we don’t have on the pairing menu. If you’re talking to a guest after just having a class about a wine region, maybe you can add a couple of seconds of something interesting and how the wine you had relates to the wine you’re pouring for them. I think that enriches everybody’s experience.
