Tasty Theatrics of the Wine Cellar

By Bernie Hunhoff

The Wine Cellar is in the heart of Rapid City, near Art Alley, the Alex Johnson Hotel and Prairie Edge Trading Company.

Christy Land waited on her first table when she was 13 years old and living with her family in the small town of Philip, 85 miles northeast of Rapid City.

“Just slinging eggs and coffee for cowboys and ranchers,” she says. “I wasn’t even legal age for work, and I loved it. I saw it as such a great way to meet people.”

She soon found that knowing one’s way around a restaurant is economic security. “It’s what put me through college at Montana State, and it allowed me to travel across the country,” she says. It also brought her home.

Land was living in California at age 30 when she returned to Rapid City for a family wedding and realized, “that I was supposed to be here. I was never lonelier than when I was surrounded by 20 million people in the valley.”

Family, friends and West River’s outdoor landscapes had been calling. “I was planning to be here two weeks, but I never went back to California,” she says. She quickly found work at some of Rapid City’s top dining establishments, including Arrowhead Country Club and Botticelli’s.

In 2006 she began to serve diners at the Wine Cellar, a cozy restaurant on Sixth Street, midway between two downtown Rapid City icons, the Alex Johnson Hotel and Prairie Edge. Curt Pochardt started the Wine Cellar in 1998, along with an adjacent wine store. Customers could buy wine at Once Upon a Vine and bring the bottle next door to enjoy with their lunch and dinner. Pochardt sold the eatery to Pamela Light and Tammy Sellars in 2001.

“I was working here when my mom passed away,” Land says. “I didn’t know what to do and then one day Pamela suggested that I should buy the Wine Cellar. At first, I thought ‘no thank you,’ but my stepdad told me we should do this. He said it’ll be fun. We can work together.”

Her stepdad is Dave Hirning, a longtime Black Hills contractor. “I think it was perhaps his way of making sure I had a career and wasn’t just galavanting around the country,” she laughs.

Christy Land credits her stepfather Dave Hirning for the restaurant's success. "I want people to know that I couldn't do it without him there by my side every day," she says.

She told Hirning, “Okay, let’s do this. But you have to be there every day with me.” Though he continues to work in construction, he has kept his promise: he does everything from playing host to cooking and washing dishes. “He especially watches to be sure the recipes are followed,” Land says. “I couldn’t do this without him.”

The result is Rapid City restaurant history. Hirning and Land have not only kept the Wine Cellar open but cemented it as a downtown destination. Entrepreneurs celebrate successes there over the filet mignon or the fabled mushroom lasagna. Families meet for birthday parties. Lovers linger in alcoves called “The Alley,” a romantic hideaway behind the main dining area.

The Wine Cellar has also become a go-to place for community fundraisers, including Cinco de Meow, held every May to raise money for the West River Spay and Neuter Coalition which seeks to prevent an over-population of dogs and cats by assisting low-income pet owners.

The cozy establishment has only about a dozen small tables, all with black tablecloths and candles. Blond oak floorboards, shiny with the charming blemishes of old wood, also add warmth to the interior. Midway between the dining area and a small kitchen is the aforementioned alley because long ago it was an actual alley between two old buildings that are now connected.

“It’s all so much fun,” Land says. “I love it. Dave loves it. I really love people and I love to create a place for them to come and enjoy.”

Watch Land, who is 50, and her small staff — all dressed in black — in action on a busy Saturday night and you soon recognize that they are not only serving food; there is a unique entertainment vibe in the air that one can almost taste.

Land says it’s as intentional as the sauce on the lasagna. She studied photography, media and theater at Montana State, and she readily acknowledges that her style of restauranting involves performance.
“You have to set aside everything going on in your own personal life,” she explains. “You are there for your guests. You need to know what you are doing, in the kitchen and in the dining room. You have to be able to read your audience and it has to be genuine. I really love people so it’s natural for me.”

She says the challenge, in these days of low unemployment, is to recruit and keep good staff. “I’d rather be short-staffed than have people who aren’t here for the right reason,” she says. “You can teach anybody how to wait on a table, but you can’t teach them to really care.”

Other issues have arisen that have been the demise of many independent eateries. For example, the costs and availability of food from corporate suppliers is so daunting that Land and her team now make nearly everything from scratch. “Even before the supply chain issues, we always tried to use local foods, much in the same concept as European cuisine served in the small restaurants there,” she says. “So much of what you might buy is full of preservatives and chemicals, so it’s just easier and healthier to make it yourself. Staying small gives us more control over quality and consistency.”

She buys honeycomb from a Colorado woman who has been raising bees for 70 years. “We get wonderful chicken from a farm in Nebraska. A family from Caputa provides fresh vegetables and our mushrooms come from Alan Carner’s Black Hills Mushrooms.” Bison meat is raised near the Badlands on author Dan O’Brien’s Wild Idea Ranch. She is a regular shopper at the Black Hills Farmers Market.

Just as the food represents the region, in a less tangible way the Wine Cellar is also a reflection of all the restaurants where Land worked. “I learned a lot about wines from Luigi Tuorletti, who ran Botticelli’s,” she says. “After our shift was over, he would sometimes have us try wines — really fine wines that I wouldn’t normally have been familiar with. I got to talk to Luigi the other day and I thanked him for all his mentoring.”

Land’s childhood friends from Philip sometimes step through the door, along with people she served at Arrowhead and other establishments.

“I love that about the Wine Cellar, the way it brings all these people together in a fun way,” she says.

Diners say the same. “Just the service. The food. The people.” That’s how veterinarian Lynn Steadman explains why he’ll drive 90 miles from Chadron, Nebraska. “It is sort of a European-California fusion,” he says. “It’s a different vibe. It’s a limited menu but everything is made fresh. The cuisine doesn’t follow any one path but it’s just good and it’s different.”

Diners will find only about a dozen tables inside the cozy Wine Cellar, all draped with black cloths and featuring a candle.

Steadman says the Wine Cellar garners attention far and wide. “The thing that amazes me is that you can mention this place and, though it’s a small place, everyone knows about it. You’ll go somewhere and be talking to a diverse group of people, and if you start talking about restaurants someone will soon recommend the Wine Cellar. It has a very devoted following.”

He credits Christy Land. “She makes it look easy, but she takes great pride in what she does,” he says. “I’ve observed that she is very concerned that each diner who comes in the door has a good experience.”

James Humen was dining just two tables away from the Nebraska veterinarian. He and his wife brought their two young children on a Saturday evening. The kids were sharing the filet mignon and wondering if they had room for chocolate cake.

Humen appreciates the atmosphere and the food. “This is one of the only chef-driven restaurants in Rapid City. I like the idea that he is in the back in the kitchen, just creating and seeing what he can do for the customers.”

Oh, yes, the food. A writer could wax on about the Wine Cellar for hundreds of words and not get around to the main attractions — the Wild Idea buffalo sliders with roasted tomato jam, carmelized onions and mushrooms; the pan-seared sea scallops on a small bed of risotto, topped with strawberries and basil; or the house filet mignon, Angus beef chargrilled with the house steak rub and mushroom demi-glace.

There’s a story behind every menu item. The risotto, made of arboreo rice, has no cream and is gluten free; it tastes so good that some might consider it a main course. The mushroom lasagna, a vegetarian feature, is richly layered with spinach, tomato, cheeses and a red sauce made — like most everything — right there in the restaurant, in a space not much bigger than a typical residential kitchen.

Curt Pochardt, who founded the diner in 1998, says it more than meets the vision he had at the outset. “They are truly cooking and creating fine foods,” he says. “Nothing comes frozen off a truck. Christy and her group have a level of expertise beyond anything we could do, and beyond what most anybody is doing today.”

He’s a fan of the Cellar’s thin crust pizzas, which include the wild boar sausage, roasted vegetable, Italian fromage, pesto and a traditional pepperoni. “Twenty-five years ago, we thought it was a good thing for our town,” Pochardt says. “I think it is even more important today to have places like the Wine Cellar. The fact that Christy and her stepdad are willing and eager to keep it going strong is something that a lot of people obviously appreciate.”

Those people are easy to meet. They are gathered, five nights a week, around the black-clothed tables on Sixth Street.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2023 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.