Nostalgia Wine Bar at Nayara Gardens in Costa Rica was one of our favorite places to dine at the entire Nayara resort, so much so, that we ate here twice! The first time was celebrating our anniversary – we participated in the multi-course wine tasting dinner which was exquisite. The second time was enjoying some of their wines by the glass and spanish tapas menu.

I had really low expectations when it came to the wine tasting dinner. Typically, I don’t drink much wine at all when traveling to Central America, because it’s usually not super great quality, and just not worth it. That was absolutely not the case at Nostalgia. The wine was carefully and expertly curated and paired with the dishes for each course. All of the wines were from either South America or Spain/Portugal, and there were a lot of really nice surprises.

The food for the wine pairing dinner was amazing, and some of the best we had on our entire trip. Everything was plated beautifully, and the silverware was etched with beautiful designs.

The highlight of the meal for me was the red snapper. It was incredibly well prepared, flaky and flavorful, and the best preparation of this fish we had all week.

The wine highlight was actually a Chilean Pinot Noir by Veramonte. I thought for sure this would have to be a high end Chilean wine, but according to Instacart, I can apparently buy it for nine bucks! High quality and good value is what I look for in a wine, and this really hit it on the nose. They served this very light bodied, fruity wine with the snapper, and it was an incredible pairing.

Another cool element was the tempura fried sage, which was used as a palate cleanser. This was something I had never had before, and it was really amazing.

Our server, Max, provided the best service we had all week as well, which is saying a lot, since the service at Nayara overall is excellent. You could tell he was really passionate about the wines and the food he was serving to us. He was super amiable and chatty, and we loved talking about the different wines with him. He paced the meal perfectly. Like I mentioned, Max was the best server we had all week, and possibly one of the best servers at any resort we’ve ever stayed at. He really made our meal feel special. This was easily the best fancy wine pairing meal we’ve ever had in Central America.

When we returned for Spanish tapas, Max was there again to show us how to use the card-operated self-service wine bar, which was a fun way to get up from your table and explore a whole bunch of different wines. Most of the European wines were very expensive for a small tasting, but the South American wines were reasonably priced, and so we mostly explored those.

We ordered a ton of tapas, from a cheese and charcuterie tray, complete with melt-in-your-mouth jamon iberico, to chicken croquettes.

We ordered a Spanish Omelette which wasn’t quite the same as in Spain, it was more of a regular omelette with onions and peppers, as well as papas bravas, where you could add as much sauce as you wanted to the perfectly crispy fried potatoes.

We absolutely loved Nostalgia Wine Bar, not only for the fancy and amazing wine pairing dinner, but also for the more casual tapas offerings. Max, our server, is a gem and deserves a ton of credit for making this place as amazing as it is. Watch the blog to see where Nostalgia will place in my ranking of Nayara’s restaurants!