"At least ordering is easy at Stubborn Seed. Your only option is an eight-course tasting menu for $175. The meal revolves around ingredients from local farms (including their own), which we appreciate. But Stubborn Seed is too concerned with where the kumquats are from and less so with the finished product on the plate. Their tasting menu is filled with the usual fancy suspects: foams, gels, shaved truffle, and emulsions. But the foams are distracting, and what’s beneath them is a mess. Sometimes you pull up spoonfuls of leafy greens. Other times you get lucky with a piece of gnudi. A tartlet threatens to crack a crown. The tomato pâte de fruit is too stiff and slightly grainy. video credit: Virginia Otazo Service is professional, and the menu leaves you full. But it’s easy to forget that this is a restaurant specializing in a $175 tasting menu. 2010s alternative hits ricochet off the cement walls as you watch cooks tweezer microgreens through the kitchen window. The dining room looks like a parking garage with its metal pipes. The entire experience feels as unfinished as the interior. Stubborn Seed takes a step in a very admirable direction—a restaurant doing its best to support and highlight local farms and produce. But that’s usually the second step. The first is getting the basics right. Food Rundown photo credit: Ryan Pfeffer Tasting Menu Dishes change often and with what’s in season. But the $175 per person tasting menu always underscores local ingredients. A meal here generally starts with a good crudo, ends with two very good main dishes, and dessert is great. But every single course between has big issues—whether it's balance, taste, texture, or all of the above. It loses its wings in the middle, when too many dishes look far prettier than they taste. Ultimately, it falls too far to fully recover." - Virginia Otazo
