The Boardroom: Charcuterie Without the Assembly
There is something deceptively laborious about making a good charcuterie board yourself. By the time you’ve bought six cheeses, three meats, olives, fruit, nuts, jam and a baguette, you’ve spent a small fortune and somehow still have to make it look pretty.
The Boardroom will do the hard part for you.
The little wine bar on Wiggins Pass Road is owned by Nick and Nila, who built the business around a fairly narrow proposition: wine, cheese and cured meat, either eaten there or packed up to take elsewhere. They also make larger grazing tables and catered spreads for parties.
The Couples Board combines soppressata, Bianco d’Oro salami and prosciutto with Parmigiano-Reggiano, Wisconsin cheddar and brie, then fills the remaining real estate with grapes, berries, olives, sweet pickles and walnuts. It’s also the board that seems to be the most popular order.
For a crowd, things become more interesting. The Grazing Board for 3–4 adds chorizo and beef pastrami alongside five cheeses, artichokes, sweet pickles, almonds, walnuts, pepper jelly and fig jam. The Carnivore Board is the maximalist option: nine meats, including mortadella with pistachio, capocollo and sun-dried rosemary ham, followed by another seven cheeses.
Before committing to a board, I’d stop in for grazing. The Boardroom is only publicly open three nights a week, from 4–9 p.m. which makes it slightly elusive, but the hours are exactly when you want wine and cheese anyway. Weekday happy hour runs 4–6 p.m. with $8 glasses of wine. The list travels from Italian Pinot Grigio to New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, German Riesling and beyond; this isn’t the place for an exhaustive education, but there is plenty to accompany a piece of brie.
And if your weekend plans involve a boat, beach or a house full of people you’d rather not cook for, remember the boards to-go. Charcuterie tastes considerably better when somebody else has already sliced everything.
The Boardroom
808 Wiggins Pass Rd., Unit 104, Naples • Thur..–Sat. 4–9 p.m. • (239) 308-7180 • theboardroomnaples.com
Originally published in
The Naples Florida Review.
Read the full edition here.