La Cave in Darien: Restaurant L'Ostal's Sexy Wine Bar

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Last April, Restaurant L’Ostal and chef-owner Jared Sippel, quietly added what he calls “a layer” to his four-plus-year-old Darien hotspot.

La Cave—the French word for cellar—is Sippel’s homage to European wine bars.

It’s small, cozy, intimate. No, they won’t mix you a cocktail. You certainly can’t order a cheeseburger. “Can you bring me the escargot from the L’Ostal menu?” Also…no.

Pours at La Cave are by the glass or half glass and the selection leans heavily European with a few California wines in the mix.

“We always had this space since I signed the lease in 2020 and we used it as storage,” Sippel says. “It was going to be a private dining room, but we don’t have a kitchen in here, and I didn’t want to bring food over from L’Ostal. It’s still good for special events or private events, but it’s different. It acts as a salon to the restaurant. People always show up early for their reservations, and we’re like 36 seats. On a busy night, they don’t have to wait in a full dining room, standing by the door holding their coats or outside. You can go there for a drink, prosciutto, cheese, whatever. It’s just another layer to our dining experience.”

Or you can just go, specifically for the experience at La Cave.

Despite being open three days per week, La Cave is available for private parties any day of the week. As for its limited days and hours, Sippel says it just makes more sense for it to be open on the main restaurant’s busier nights. Come to La Cave for a snack and a few pours or swing by before or after if you’re eating at L’Ostal to make a night of it.

Just to the right of L’Ostal’s entrance is where you’ll find La Cave. What you’ll find inside of what used to be various other businesses such as a printing shop, pizza joint, and Chinese takeout, is where L’Ostal cellars its wine collection, and is now home to La Cave’s 14 seats. And on its menu are a variety of wine, beer, and bites like caviar service (complete with crème fraiche, chives, and chips), cheeses, cured meats, tinned fish, nuts and olives and other bar snacks, and open-faced sandwiches.

That’s what it’s meant to be. It’s what Sippel wants it to be and he’s not budging on that for a bunch of reasons.

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“It’s very much something you’d see in Europe, inspired by Basque Country, French, and Italian wine bars,” he says. “A wine bar in America means ‘restaurant.’ There are so many places that say they aren’t (a restaurant), but they’re a full-blown restaurant. People have asked for cocktails but we don’t do that. There’s no kitchen either. It’s about the products; popping tins and cans and serving up variations of bites and snacks and tartines. It’s really about the producers with what we’re making over here.”

On select nights, La Cave does host events that tend to focus on a specific region. At the end of 2025, the wine bar highlighted Spain with a focus on wines of Lopez de Heredia and made-to-order paella, followed by November’s Burgundy & Bourguignon event that featured Burgundy wines, one for each course, plus, beef bourguignon, the region’s most famous dish.

By the time you read this, others that will have gone down at La Cave are the restaurant’s annual white truffle dinner with rare vintages of Barolo Barbaresco and another that’s three-courses of champagne and caviar.

The goal of La Cave’s special events, though, is to shine a spotlight on the wine, first and foremost, but it’s also to transport you somewhere else.

“Ultimately, I want you to eat the food and drink the wine and be transported to somewhere you’ve been in France, Spain, or Italy,” Sippel explains. “Dishes here at special events will be to showcase the classic dishes. Bourguignon was perfect for it because it’s cooked in the wine that we’re drinking. You won’t get some complicated duck dish that has this, this, this, and that on the plate. I will always make dishes that take you to that place, dishes that a grandmother would give you if you went there. I want the food to be about that place. If the plate’s too busy, how can you focus on the wine?”

Themed events are a thing at La Cave, like a recent one titled Burgundy & Bourguignon. At $100 per person (additional $100 for a guided wine flight if you choose), included a welcome pour, snacks, a choice of pâté de campagne or the restaurant’s popular escargot, a salad, beef bourguignon with pommes purée, a cheese course, and chocolate mousse with whipped cream and Sicilian pistachios.

La Cave’s events are, according to Sippel, meant to be around $65 to $100 (with exceptions) for food and another roughly equal supplement if you do the wine pairings.

Sippel also promises that La Cave’s theme nights will always be led by a sommelier to give guests an education and if you’re curious or want to pick their brains about what you’re drinking or otherwise, you can absolutely do that.

“The food is there for the wine,” he says. “I’m not trying to recreate dishes like beef bourguignon. It’s to feature wine and serve appropriate food, not to have it steal the show from the wine. We’re trying to show off the grapes, the region, and wines of what place. We don’t want it to be a wine event where servers don’t know shit about the wine, so they’re just pouring. It’s part of the experience, like Morgan Pruitt (head of beverage for Eataly) is at our white truffle dinner and knows Italian wine inside and out. It's something to give people connection to the wines in the moment. We want these events to be good. It has to have that layer.”

Events aside, La Cave is pouring every Thursday from 5 – 9 and on Fridays and Saturdays from 5 – 10 unless otherwise noted. And no, they still won’t bring you a half or full portion of the black pepper pappardelle from next door no matter how much you beg for it.

“I don’t want the menu to be flushed out with bullshit to please everyone,” Sippel says. “It’s just another layer of L’Ostal. It’s not intended to be for everyone. I’m not changing it just to put butts in seats. I wanted to offer something different because there’s nothing else here like this. The people who love it, love it, and it’s for them.”

42 Center Street, Darien (just east of Restaurant L’Ostal)
restaurantlostal.com/la-cave