OK so we’ve all read about Bern’s, the famous steakhouse in Tampa with the amazing wine list, right?

Well, I had the chance to experience it last night, since I’m here for the big game….I had very low expectations – Michael had been there ages ago and said the food was just OK and not to expect too much….

And if you were just going for the steak, I would agree – you would think it was just another steakhouse.

But let me tell you, that doesn’t begin to describe the “experience” that is Bern’s.

First of all, the place is huge. There’s the Bordeaux room, the Burgundy room, Andre Tchelistcheff room, Harry Waugh room etc with amazing photos all over the restaurant that Bern took back in the day with all these legends of wine…there is a room that pays homage to Hermitage – with amazing panoramic photo panels of the hill of Hermitage that makes you feel you are there! We took a tour and the kitchen is humongous and the upstairs “dessert room” has to be seen to be believed.

We toured the wine cellar and it is amazing (with 48 degrees perfect storage). Bern has been collecting wine there since 1956 and many of the wines were bought on release and held there in perfect storage since.

Quite simply this is the most amazing wine list in the country if not the world. Maybe La Tour d’Argent in Paris comes close? Some of the selections are too old – like an amazing number of 85 Cotes du Rhones? And the selections from Italy, Spain and elsewhere is not complete. But as far as the legends go (primarily Bordeaux), there are about 100 pages of endless classified Bordeaux with more pre-1970 offerings than I have EVER seen on a wine list and MANY from the 30’s 20’s, 10s, 00’s and even 1800s.

And these legends are a fraction of what they might cost if you found them on a NYC wine list like Cru or Veritas – or at auction – AND more importantly, the chances of them being real are close to 100% here.

To give you an idea, one of the servers told me that in the next room, Tiger Woods was drinking 45 Mouton and 47 Cheval Blanc!!!!!!!! (The place was packed – many celebs because of the Super Bowl)

So if you are a wine lover, this is a place to drink something you could never have anywhere else. We didn’t go whole hog like Tiger, but we had two legendary bottles - 73 Ridge Montebello and a 61 Lynch Bages  and wow!!!!!!!!!!! Both were amazingly youthful and great. I ordered the Lynch-Bages purposely because MS and I had a bottle years ago in France that was awful – and we were sure it was a fake. This one was real, baby.

Someone last night described Bern’s as “Disneyworld for wine lovers” and I agree. Yes, it’s worth a special trip if you are ever near Tampa.