The Library Wine Bar & Bistro

We had my sister's bridal shower, in the basement private room. The staff was very sweet, kind, and on the ball, they knew what to do and when to do it. If you're worried about food, there was something for everyone, and it was amazing.

Nice spot for a date night. Right in on a weekend with prompt service at bar. Wine was good and the food was even better.

This was our second time here for brunch. Very good choices and all were fresh. The omelette station was great. Lots of fresh veggies to add to your creation. Delicious choices for dessert, as if you had room... All and all a local top ten in category of the best place for Sunday brunch in the area.

The food was absolutely fantastic, each dish bursting with flavor and cooked to perfection, especially my steak. The staff was friendly and attentive, and the restaurant itself had a lovely, cozy atmosphere that added to the overall enjoyment of the meal. It's definitely worth a visit, and I'm already looking forward to returning!

We were last here when the restaurant was under a different owner and menu. We decided (6 of us) to give it a try since we’ve always enjoyed this restaurant (new owner kept the same name). Well, it didn’t disappoint. We arrived early (Friday, Dec 20th) for the happy hour and a dinner reservation. The happy hour specials drinks & menu) were very good. The bartender very pleasant and very attentive despite the large crowd. All their staff were in sync and seemed to enjoy working there. We moved on to dinner and our hostess (Debbie) very knowledgeable of the menu and able to provide the details along with recommendations (we asked). Our hostess was attentive and we never felt a need to look for her (definitely a sign of experience). The food was delicious and we had a very enjoyable experience. I must say that their entire team of staff members (from greeters to support servers) were just friendly and smiling and it made a difference. We never felt rushed. We definitely will be back.

Excellent food, treated so well by staff! Definitely recommended!

Had the Wild boar special. Absolutely delicious! Meat fell off the bone. Very talented executive Chef, can't wait to go back!

I held my daughter’s Baby Shower in The Reading Room. The room was set up perfectly. It was a pleasure to work with the event coordinator, Allie. The Breakfast Buffet was delicious and excellent, so much to choose from. The service staff members were so friendly, fun, and professional. I am so pleased with the day we had at the Library Wine Bar & Bistro.

This was one of the best meals I've had in a while, everything we ordered was amazing. The drinks were well balanced, and the creme brulee was divine. The menu was peppered with seasonal produce and flavors .

An absolutely beautiful atmosphere cozy and comfy great food great service very friendly staff. My sister and I had an amazing experience on a Sunday for brunch. Thank you for all you do.

Words cannot describe how much we love this place. We started with a date night on a whim to try a new restaurant, little did we know we would find the perfect wedding venue. From start to finish every single person we came in contact with was helpful and so so kind. We had a cocktail style reception and our guests raved over the food. We did not worry about anything on our wedding day and that’s because this place is so amazing. I would recommend The Library for any type of event or just a romantic dinner. I am so glad we chose them to host one of the best days of our lives.

My favorite place in Wallingford. Food and service excellent as always. I have to say, I do not like the new lighting. Very harsh, and way too bright for evening. Kills the atmosphere.

Attended a shower here. Picturesque neighborhood and building. Beautiful decorations. Buffet brunch was tasty and varied.

What an enjoyable evening. The ambiance was beautiful. We were seated in the main room that had a beautiful lit fireplace. Our table assistant was wonderful and very attentive. We ordered linguini with shrimp and maple chicken entrees. Both entrees were delicious. Before dinner we had ordered octopus for appetizer which was also delicious. We will be returning to try the other menu items. I have recommended this unique establishment to others.

Johnny T. Is absolutely amazing. We've had him as a waiter for years now, and he's wonderful! Attentive, respectful, knowledgeable. He knows exactly what he's doing. Give this man a raise!

I didnt take any pictures but the food was delicious. There was a variety of food items something to please everyone. Carving and omlette stations. Their dessert station was amazing too. Service was excellent. Plenty of parking in the back. This is definitely a must try for brunch.

We went for a birthday brunch and had a great meal. Two of the people in our party of 6 were dairy free and our server, Rachel was so accommodating, ensuring we knew what was safe for us to eat and walking us through what options we could consume. It was such a good experience, everyone loved their meals. Highly recommend. Drinks were very tasty too!!

I very much enjoy dining at The Library. It's a pleasant experience from the look of the restaurant to the food to the service. I had a cauliflower steak, shrimp and grits, brussel sprouts, créme bruele and an alcoholic coffee beverage in which I enjoyed all of it. I highly recommend this place.

Wonderful atmosphere and beautiful decor. Came here for dinner with my family, it wasn’t first time here so I knew what to expect. The food was delicious everyone enjoyed their dinner, the steaks were overdone but still excellent! Service was good, I would have given 5 stars if the steaks weren’t overdone

The interior of the Library was early 30s. Ornate railings, staircases and balconies. The columns and the coffered ceilings were impressive. The menu was diverse and very appealing. The service was outstanding and very attentive, the only draw back was the noise. From the moment we entered the noise overpowered any conversation we attempted to have. With live music in the main dinning room it was virtually impossible to speak and be understood. If I were to make a recommendation it would be to attempt to tone down the sound vibration and not have live music in between the bar and main dinning area.

I had the lobster grilled cheese. Very good. I did find some pieces of shell in my sandwich but it was very little. Aside from that, I enjoyed the atmosphere, the tables where separated and I felt safe eating inside. The wait staff was very tentative in the beginning but as our stay increased their attentiveness also decreased. Otherwise it was a decent eating experience.

Had the duck breast entree and short rib. Cocktails were solid and dessert too. Overall 7/10 great date night and cozy Main Street area. Thank you!

I visited the library during their holiday artisan market. I was able to buy one of a kind Christmas gifts. This place is gorgeous and the brunch was delicious. You need to call ahead to reserve a table because they can get busy. I like the ambience and history that comes with this place. Overall a nice experience.

Great restaurant, with a couple caveats. First and foremost, the food was excellent. We started with the steak crostini for an appetizer, it was phenomenal. Set in a creamy gorgonzola mushroom sauce, you won't be disappointed. My ceaser salad came with anchovies, which I'm always pleased to see offered, my wife got the Caldo Verde soup which was more potatoe based than we expected but still very quite tasty. Onto the main courses, I got the short ribs, also quite good, very tender and set on a bed of something like thick quinoa with a demi glaze over. My wife got the mahi mahi, although a little on the dry side, also quite good and an exceptional blend of flavors with the pineapple rice it came with. For dessert we got 2 espressos and shared a flan which we both thouroughly enjoyed. Very creamy and close to what I'm used to in a homemade flan. Now, the downside, and the only reason for 4 instead of 5 stars. First, expect a wait. We made reservations, arrived at 545 and were seated promptly however the service was painfully slow. We left at 730 and that's because we asked for the bill in advance and went to the bar to pay it as we were trying to make a 7:45 movie time. Had we not taken those steps we would easily have been there until 8pm. Second, although they market themselves as having "Portuguese Fare", do not expect an authentic experience. I counted five Portuguese items on the menu however one of those was questionable at best. There is no such thing as Portuguese loaded fries.... It's quite opposite of something Portuguese. About the only thing authentically Portuguese in the restaurant was the artwork on the walls and the scant wine offerings including some from Gouveia vineyards in Wallingford. Had I not been expecting Portuguese cuisine i could have looked aside of the slow service to give five stars. In short, great food, beautiful setting and a great ambiance. Expect a wait and don't come for the Portuguese cuisine because you'll be pressed to find it. Four stars.

Salmon and pasta primavera were very good. Wait staff seemed a bit overwhelmed and needed to be reminded to fill waters and bring the check, but all in all a nice dinner.

This is a very nice spot for brunch. At our most recent visit, the service and food was great. Beautiful place and lovely atmosphere.

Very beautiful place. Happy hour food options could be better. Mocktails were cool. I can see coming back for cocktails next time because the menu looked great. Had a good time.

Cool venue and good food. Abysmal service, but it seemed like a randomly very busy Thursday, server seemed like he was doing his best, but it also seemed like he had too many tables. Burrata salad, duck, and Library were all delicious, and the PBJ Old Fashioned was absolutely fantastic!

I came here to try out the Sunday happy hour menu after seeing the great hours they had. From 2-6:30pm you get to enjoy the specials they have on the food menu! They do not unfortunate offer drink specials with happy hour, however they still have a lot to choose from. The drinks were well made, the food was also tasty. The happy hour calamari and flatbread were delicious and a great price point. However I will say that the cheese and vegetable crudite plate was a little small for the price. Our waitress was so friendly and checked on us a few times. The inside was beautiful as well and we'll spaced out. I'd recommend a visit here for sure.

Great food, service and ambiance. Prices can be a bit steep, but worth it for a night out.

Very cool spot in a beautiful former library. Most of the food was great but the steak was overcooked. Order a temp down at least (like most of the Northeast). The steak crostini was awesome. The burrata was amazing. Only real beef was the noise level was crazy high, and the service was too slow.

Such a nice refined elegant experience. The menu is creative and delicious. Decent wine choices. Nice cocktails. Service is spectacular. The environment is class without being pretentious. Only negative is it can get noisy even when there are only few people dining. But when its quiet its unbeatable.

We went for buffet brunch and overall it was a pleasant experience. The ambiance is fun. Classic vintage library vibes. The food was pretty good overall but I’ve had better brunch experiences. There was a good variety of brunch foods including your customized classic omelet station. I think the French toast and other carby foods were ok. I am biased bc I do feel pancakes, French toast are much better when made to order. Cocktails were ok. I ordered an espresso martini and it was standard but the bartenders were pretty friendly. Service was decent maybe a little slow. Would I go back? Maybe, if a group of friends wanted to go, I’m down to try again.

Would’ve been nice if we received a bag to put our food in to prevent it from going all over the car

This was our 2nd experience at the library recently and it did not go as well as we expected. My wife's medium rare steak was cold on the inside and my rear steak was crispy/charcoaled on the outside. On a good note our waitress was extremely professional and the management was more than willing to compensate us for all the inconvenience.

Very cool interior. They really need some noise damping though, it was hard to hear across our 2 person table. Johnnie, our waiter, was great. Food was good but there was nothing refined or subtle about it. Huge servings, quite good just not great. Where I really felt it fails though is as a "wine bar". The selection by the glass was not tiny, but pretty much every glass was incredibly generic / boring / low end (see photo). Absolutely nothing I would actually want to drink with a steak. The Merlot is 18/bottle retail. The cabernet is 23. Both very mediocre. By the bottle at least there were a few that I would drink, despite only a page and a half long list. But for example - put that Barolo on the by the glass list, and then I would expect something higher end by the bottle! Also, for a "wine bar" - no vintages listed? So - complete fail on the wine aspect.

We usually love The Library. The service is consistently top notch and the atmosphere is great. However, I was disappointed this time in the tomato burrata salad appetizer under the Specials. The tomatoes were far from being ripe. They were barely orange, rubbery texture and not very tasty at all. I assumed that since it was a Special on the menu that the kitchen would have vine ripened tomatoes from one of the many local farms in Wallingford. Hoping it will be better next time.

I love the character of the building, love the entrance. The food was tasteful. Unfortunately service was worse than any Applebee's. We had a private event room upstairs. 1 drinking bartender, and 1 MIA server. Empty plates and cups left on the table for the entire 3 hours. I had to search for the server to get waters refilled for the 4 tables. They were not attentive at all. The funny part was the bartender (guy showing off his tattoos) was taking shots every so often, and constantly on his cell phone, never making eye contact when we would order drinks. Only response was, " yeah, you will have to wait 2 minutes ``. Bartender not professional or presentable. I would not come back for a private party event ever again and probably not for anything more than drinks. Wish this could have been better, I had really high hopes of this place.

This is a rare instance where we had a decidedly subpar experience and yet would still give the place another shot. My top-tier chum who literally went to the school of hospitality and I came here for brunch on our way back from Boston (this is right around the halfway point for us) after there was a long wait at our first/preferred destination down the street. There wasn't a wait time at all here despite Library simultaneously hosting at least one event in a different area on the establishment, but maybe that should have told us something. Super cool interior, and there's no way around it. The building very obviously housed a legit library back in the day, complete with Doric columns (a term I usually reserve for describing presidential monuments, not restaurants), and the current business leans into it, as they should. You can see in the accompanying photo that their beer tap at the bar has book covers on them, and a lot of the original interior has been preserved. So understandably, you can see why they also sell themselves as an event space; you can play around with a couple of different business models here. Without a doubt the biggest selling point we saw on our visit. Library had an all-you-can-eat brunch buffet, which is a concept I try to typically avoid because I don't possess any portion control (there are memories from the 1990s surrounding Pizza Hut and their lunch buffet that I'm still not willing to fully address) but honestly? It wasn't a problem here, and that's not a compliment. The set-up was pretty impressive; they had a pastry table, an omelet station (I think there was a roast beef or pot roast situation over here as well?) where a cook was serving up made-to-order requests, and a long table of self-serve items for both breakfast and then lunch further down the line. So you had a LOT of options depending on how your palate was feeling. Unfortunately almost everything was a giant miss. The eggs tasted like they were made from powder, the pastries were stale and/or tasteless and virtually all of the food came off as the worst kind of mass produced meal, something you'd encounter in a very low-end motel offering. The only item worth recommending was the roasted potatoes, which I thought were very flavorful and the only item that didn't require copious amounts of additional seasoning. It was so universally mediocre I'm genuinely surprised this is still something they offer every Sunday - the quality just isn't good so it feels like an unforced error to do buffet style in lieu of a more traditional sit-down brunch. Our bartender was friendly; she wasn't consistently attentive especially in the second half of the meal (we were trying to make eye contact for close to 10 minutes for the check, and she was nearby for all of it) but when she was around she was professional and accommodating. This could be a mark against us as degenerates, but we both thought the mimosas were a little too heavy on the orange juice (I'm not looking for gasoline in my brunch beverages, but ideally a nice hue on the cheeks emerges). I have to think the brunch is not their specialty - and if it is, that's a little concerning. But if I'm back in the area during a different time of week/day, I'd see if something else works here.

Don't waste your money! The venue was pretty but not spectacular, the acoustics are bad so don't even think about talking with other guests BUT THE WORST is the food. If you insist on going, avoid the french toast as it is overcooked with no flavor, do not attempt the Eggs Benedict as the English Muffins are stuck to the hotplate and the knife provided does not cut through the muffins, the eggs of the Eggs Benedict were overcooked as was the ham. Most of the food was over salted to disguise the lack of flavor, and the dessert plates were hot - the desserts were chocolate so would quickly melt and again not worth the effort as the desserts were not done well. The stuffed sole were so lemon flavored that it made the mouth pucker but the stuffing was fine. The quiche was cold. The list goes on. No, I would say the only reason it got one star was for the pretty, not spectacular, location.