The Ebbitt Room

Walking into the Ebbitt Room, tucked inside the Virginia Hotel, the wine list feels like it belongs here — polished, a little formal, and leaning hard into California and France. It's not a list that's going to surprise you, but it's the right list for a candlelit Victorian dining room in a Jersey Shore beach town. Wine Spectator has been handing this place an Award of Excellence since 2017, and you can see why.

The list runs 150-plus bottles with a clear California-forward identity — Caymus, Jordan, Stag's Leap, Kistler, Duckhorn — the kind of producers that regulars recognize and trust. France gets a solid seat at the table too, with Louis Jadot Burgundy representing the Old World alongside Domaine Drouhin Oregon Pinot Noir bridging the gap for New World drinkers who want something more nuanced. The range is respectable for a hotel restaurant in a seasonal resort town, though adventurous drinkers looking for grower Champagne or natty Jura pours will need to recalibrate expectations. Gaps exist — South America, Spain, and anything below the radar are essentially absent — but what's here is well-chosen.

Twelve to twenty options by the glass is genuinely useful, and the $12-$18 range is fair for a white-tablecloth hotel dining room on the Jersey Shore. We'd love to see more rotation and a rotating staff pick, but what's poured is reliable and recognizable rather than random or lazy.