2 /5 Paul Duke: Early dinner at 5:30 on Friday night, no reservation. Restaurant wasn’t full but there were several tables seated when we entered.
Due to reservations the host couldn’t accommodate our two-top in the main dining room, but invited us to walk out and around to the adjacent building and take the elevator up to the second story dining room. We did.
Greeted and seated by the host after a few minutes, then quickly greeted by our server. We ordered calamari and I ordered a glass of Petite-Petit, which was unfortunately warmer than room temperature. My wife doesn’t drink alcohol, and our server made her a nonalcoholic juice cocktail that she enjoyed.
The calamari was exceptional, with tiny tendrils and delicate rings, crispy and light, piping hot, and served with tomato and Asian sweet chili sauces on the side. Best calamari I’ve had in a long time.
Side salads came next—Kitchen Salad—which was in spite of its “everything-but-the” name, was only mesclun greens, cherry tomatoes, a thick-cut ring of red onion, and a tablespoon of crunchy bacon. Very plain and average, but the blue cheese dressing was nice.
Bread came during the salad course: rough chopped bread with a thick dark red sauce. The bread was stale and chewy and the sauce was oddly halfway between a vinaigrette and a marinara. We tasted but didn’t eat it.
Her fried green tomatoes came with micro greens and crumbled goat cheese. There were chunky congealed spoonfuls of strawberry balsamic jelly all over the top. It was unfortunately a detractor from the nicely fried tomatoes underneath.
Entrees were beautiful. My steak was cooked absolutely perfectly, with a crust on the outside I could hear as my steak knife easily sliced through the tender filet. It was mouth-meltingly tender… and unbelievably salty. Salty to the point I thought I must have just gotten a particularly heavy dose on one corner of the steak. I turned it and cut again. Equally beautiful, equally crusty, equally tender, and just as mouth-puckeringky salty. No pepper, no herbs, no garlic or any other kind of flavor. Just lots and lots of salt. I poured the Demi-glace over it—which it shouldn’t have needed at all—but it couldn’t offset the overpowering salinity of that steak.
The mashed potatoes were over salted too, and so liquidy that they sagged between the tines of my fork as I took a bite. Bland but salty, and more like a scoop in a cafeteria than a side for a $60+ dollar steak.
After the third bite I couldn’t do it and pushed everything to the side of the table and drank my second glass of warm red wine. My wife scraped a quarter cup of excess jelly onto the edge of her plate so she could finish her tomatoes.
Our server asked if I wanted a box for my uneaten food and I told him it was unfortunately inedible. He thanked me for letting him know but did not apologize. It was left on my tab and no mention was made of it again.
Thankfully desserts were nice. The peanut butter pie and pistachio cheesecake were both delicious.
It’s disappointing—I don’t care that a manager or chef didn’t come to speak with me. But there was no apology, no offer to remake it or bring me something else, and I paid for most of a very nice steak and its side that was ruined before it came out of the kitchen, and mostly uneaten when it went back into it.
I don’t know if my second glass of wine not being on the check was an oversight, or a small nod to my experience…
There is potential here, but enough obvious things out of line as well that make it a place I can’t recommend or see myself returning to.
