What is a BYOB??
 

We would have to bring our own liquor into a restaurant in Philadelphia?? I that just in the city, or state-wide??

BYOB=bring your own booze. Some restaurants don't have a liquor license and allow customers to bring their own. It's a lot cheaper that way. Can't be city or statewide, just the place you're looking at.

Or Bring your own Bottle -- It's very prevalent across the river in New Jersey where liquor licenses are very costly. A lot of mom & pop places there are BYOB's.

There are a few of these restaurants in Philadelphia, but for the most part, Phila restaurants will serve alcohol/beer/wine. ((b))

Pennsylvania has a massive, poorly-run government liqor store system (a relic of its Puritan founders, I guess). That makes wine selection and prices less attractive than most other states. Philadelphia also has stringent rules regarding liquor licenses. These two issues have led to a large number of successful BYOB establishments. But there are certainly lots of restaurants that carry their own wine lists as well.

We went to a place like this in Chicago. It was great. We brought in our case of cold beer, they put it in their fridge and brought it to us as needed.

They might charge you a corkage fee to open and serve the alchohol to you, but it is still much cheaper than usual bar rates.

Bring your own boyfriend.

bring your own bassethound.

in my frat days it meant "bring your own bimbo." Beer was always provided, girls were not.

Backoff, you ornery bastard
Boff your own boyfriend

It's nice to have options so I say Bring Your Own Bartender!

Seamus, :-O

Erm, pardon me...

The founders were, in fact, Quakers, not Puritans. Quite different.

Apologies in advance for the long post. But some Philadelphia restaurants that offer wine will sometimes also let you bring in your own bottle -- for a fee. This from a recent Inquirer story:

When former Le Bec-Fin chef Daniel Stern opened his new restaurant, Gayle, in Queen Village, he didn't yet have a liquor license. So he was more than happy to have patrons bring their own wines.

Six weeks later, after getting his license and unveiling his carefully crafted wine list, he learned how adamant many customers were about bringing their own wine.

"We have had quite a few people tell us they're not coming back, even though they love the restaurant," said Stern, whose $35 "corkage fee" incensed oenophiles. "We were a little naive about how strongly people felt about BYOB."

The Philadelphia region's thriving BYOB restaurant scene has spawned something of a brown-bag revolt, as wine fanciers and frugal diners have forced many liquor-licensed restaurants to accommodate them or risk empty seats.

Some, such as Farmacia in Old City and Prima Donna in Center City, let diners bring their own wines without restriction, while others charge a corkage fee - from $5 to $40 - for bringing your own bottle.

Still others, such as Sovalo in Northern Liberties, dedicate one night a week to the BYOB set, at no charge. Even Le Bec-Fin, with its haughtiest of haute cuisine and $4,000 wines, has staged the occasional BYOB night.

The proliferation and popularity of the region's bring-your-own restaurants, along with a growing interest in wine, have emboldened diners to drink what they want, where they want, at a price they like.

Philadelphia-area diners are much more likely to take their own wine to dinner than are most Americans. A survey last year by OpenTable.com, an online reservation service, found that in Philadelphia, 63 percent of the patrons surveyed said they had taken their own wine to a white-tablecloth restaurant in their last 10 meals. The national average was 27 percent. New York, by comparison, reported only 25 percent.

"Philadelphia is probably the BYOB capital of the United States," Stern said.

Former Le Bec-Fin sommelier Gregory Moore, co-owner of Moore Brothers Wine Co., said increasingly sophisticated wine consumers often prefer their own wines to those at a restaurant.

"A good many of them are much more tuned in than the wine buyers in restaurants," Moore said. "For a lot of people now, not being able to bring your own wine is a deal-breaker.

"If you can spend $15 for a bottle of wine, rather than $50, well, that underlies the interest," said Moore, who also said Pennsylvania's steep price markups give full-service restaurants a predictable profit stream that can make them complacent about their food.

Contrary to what some restaurateurs may say, it's legal to bring your own wine to restaurants in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The liquor control authorities in both states say the laws don't prohibit customers from bringing their own liquor, but the laws don't require a restaurant operator to permit it, either. (The issue is almost moot in New Jersey, with so many dry towns and so few liquor-licensed restaurants that the BYOBs pose less of a threat.)

In Delaware, state law prohibits bringing your own bottle into restaurants with wine lists.

"For many years, it was common for restaurateurs to say it was illegal," said Mark Squires, a Philadelphia lawyer and Internet wine writer. "The myth continues to persist... but nobody can find any basis for that in the law."

At Sovalo, owner-chef Joseph Scarpone said his roots in the Napa Valley prompted him to institute BYOB Mondays when he opened his restaurant in Northern Liberties last year.

"We're from the wine region of California, and it was typical there to be really wine-friendly, though some of the corkage fees were very high," he said. "We want to give people an opportunity to do that here. But we had to think of the economics, too.

"We think we reached a compromise that works for everyone."

In the bring-or-buy battle, chef David Ansill has a foot in both camps. He is the owner of Pif, a popular South Philadelphia BYOB, as well as the just-opened Ansill in Queen Village, which has a liquor license and touts its wine and food pairings.

Ansill set a $15 corkage fee at his new restaurant, a charge he says allows customers to bring a favorite wine to dinner but discourages patrons from bringing a cheap bottle just to dodge his wine list.

Ernest A. Salandria, owner of Ernesto's 1521 Cafe, recently taped a yellow sign on the sample menu outside his Italian restaurant at 1521 Spruce St.: BYOB or enjoy our fine Italian wines.

Having made the transformation from a cafe to a BYOB to a full-service restaurant, he has now come full circle, bowing to the demand of many customers to bring their own. He decided to permit BYO, with no corkage fee.

He used to watch wine-toting patrons either leave immediately or sit through an unhappy meal with an unopened bottle - "and not come back."

His new laissez-faire policy has been a success, Salandria said, bringing in many new customers. But he's selling a lot less wine.

"Last Saturday, I sold three bottles. I thought, 'Hey, this is working too well.' But for a restaurateur, there is nothing worse than empty seats."

Thanks for the great article! I need to do a search and see what Michigan law allows.

Michigan just passed a law allowing restaurants to send unfinished wine home with their patrons, so we will be more inclined to order a bottle. (Well, when I'm done having this baby we will be!)

They have to recork the bottle below the lip of the bottle (or trim the cork) and you can't have it in reach of the driver in the car. The anti-drunk driving people are happy that people aren't trying to finish their wine and then drive home.

What next--bring your own dessert?? I think I would feel a little uncomfortable walking into a nice restaurant with a bottle of wine under my arm. Seems a little too pretentious--"your wine isn't good enough for me."

People normally don't bring their own bottle to restaurants that serve alcohol/wine, but it's common place in New Jersey. If a new restaurant opens in town, the first question out of our mouths is "Is it a BYOB?" ((b))

"your wine isn't good enough for me" actually is not the point for many of us who do bring wine into restaurants.
Many (not all of course) restaurants are run by people who think mostly about the food and the wine list is an afterthought. Even those restaurants where wine is given more consideration may not be in a position to store great bottles of wine. Like many, I happen to have a fairly large wine cellar and appreciate the opportunity to open an old and often rare bottle of wine with a great meal at a restaurant. The usual rule is that you never take a bottle of wine that is already on the restaurant's list and definitely never bring a bottle of wine that you picked up at the local 7/11 on your way there. Here in S. Florida it is typical for a restaurant to charge anywhere from $10-$20 to open a bottle of wine. btw: if you do this, be generous to your server when tipping. It's just as much work for them to open and serve your wine as it is to serve the establishments. For me, it's a very fair price to pay to be allowed to open up a 1985 Lynch Bages (or something similar) at a good local restaurant. For me, it's not a matter of saying that a restaurants wine list is not good enough but rather saying that I feel that the restaurant is so outstanding with regard to it's cuisine that I am happy to open a great bottle of wine to pair with their food.

How's this for a backwards state? I live in lovely South Carolina where we have just recently passed a law to use free-pour liquor bottles. Yes, only airlines and South Carolina were minibottle customers. Sad, I know. It was actually counter productive because it was meant to limit the amount of liquor in drinks, but it actually gave too much, in my opinion. I will have to say that drinks taste much better now.

Admittedly, when I was in college 10 years ago, I considered this an asset to SC law.

There is nothing wrong with taking a FINE bottle of wine or one that is special with you to a restaurant that normally serves wine, particularly for a special occasion.

There is something wrong with taking a standard bottle of wine to a restaurant that sells wine just to save money.

A restaurant that is strictly BYOB, where they don't sell any alcohol, is of course another matter.

Last summer for my partner's birthday, we took a bottle of award winning Nobile di Montepulciano that we had brought back from a private wine tour the summer before in Tuscany to Flemings for our dinner. I think we paid $20 for corkage and when the waiter saw the bottle he suspected it was special and brought us their best and largest wine glasses. Then he decanted it for us. He got a nice tip and we also offered him a taste, which he loved. We were not looked down on for bringing it. It made this birthday dinner very special.

Regarding the above post, we live in SRQ and dine at our local Flemings and have had very similar experiences, both with our own as well as with wine from the restaurant list. Their service is always very professional and quite courteous. I don't know anything about the training they get but I have an idea that wine service is an important part. Even though they are part of a large national chain, they are excellent restaurants.

Am I the only one who doesn't know where SRQ or Flemings is located? :-) ((b))