The Kingston, PA eatery announced Duets, a five-course wine dinner that seems like something special…
The most interesting thing about a great wine dinner isn’t the wine.
It’s the argument.
The conversation that starts after the first sip. The moment somebody at the table swears the Oregon Pinot Gris is the answer while somebody else insists the Italian red just changed the whole damn dish. Good wine creates curiosity. Great wine creates disagreement.
That’s the idea behind Duets, the five-course wine dinner coming to Kevin’s Bar & Restaurant in Kingston on June 25.
Guided by Master Sommelier Larry O’Brien and built around a seasonal menu from Executive Chef Matthew Gilbert, the evening pairs five courses with ten wines from the Jackson Family portfolio. Every dish arrives with two wines, letting diners taste how dramatically a pairing can shift depending on what’s in the glass.
The evening opens with a smoked trout taco tucked into a crispy blue corn shell with pickled jalapeño, hot honey and chive, paired with Chapel Down Brut Rosé from England.
From there, the menu leans into early Pennsylvania summer. “Pennsylvania Creamery” brings whipped local ricotta, charred sourdough, honeycomb, pickled strawberry, toasted walnut and basil, served with an Oregon Pinot Gris and an Italian red from Tre Venezie. It is dairy, fruit, smoke, acid, and crunch, the kind of plate built for debate.
The second course, “Early Summer,” keeps things quieter: grilled asparagus, soft egg, charred onion soubise, rye crumble and chive. A Willamette Valley Riesling and Sonoma County white blend will test how much weight a wine should bring to something green, rich, and delicate.
Then comes lamb belly, slow-roasted and lacquered with birch beer, with charred scallion and smoked sea salt. Bordeaux on one side, California Syrah on the other. Old World structure versus New World muscle. Same plate. Different fight.
By the fourth course, Gilbert goes big: grilled local Wagyu ribeye, potato purée, roasted lion’s mane mushrooms and black garlic bordelaise. The pairings, a 2016 Hickinbotham Cabernet Sauvignon from Australia and a 2012 Valadorna from Tuscany, make this the main event.
This is where the dinner starts to matter beyond luxury. Kingston already has serious places to eat. Bistro 174 has carved out a reputation for polished, seasonal, chef-driven dining, while Hummus & Honey brings a different kind of culinary confidence to the borough, bright, modern, personal, and highly specific.
Kevin’s sits in another lane: larger, louder, more social, a neighborhood restaurant with enough range to host cocktails after work, dinner with friends and, now, a tightly composed wine dinner with a Master Sommelier in the room.
That’s the real story here. Not simply that Kevin’s is pouring expensive bottles with steak. It’s that a familiar Kingston restaurant is treating local diners like they are ready for something more demanding: comparison, conversation, contradiction. Ten wines. Five courses. No hiding behind the usual safe pairing. The whole point is to taste one dish two ways and decide what you believe.
Dessert brings strawberry shortcake with brown butter biscuit, macerated strawberries and vanilla bean cream, followed by a brown butter old fashioned made with brown butter-washed bourbon, Mexican vanilla bean, Demerara and Peychaud’s bitters.
Kevin’s has long operated as one of Kingston’s recognizable gathering places, and its own site describes the restaurant as serving dinner Monday through Saturday with space for private events ranging from small parties to larger gatherings. But Duets suggests something more ambitious than another busy night in the dining room.
For a few hours on June 25, dinner becomes a controlled experiment.
One dish. Two glasses. A table full of opinions.
That has all the makings for a very memorable dinner.
