Jessica H.
Yelp
My husband & I decided to celebrate our 11 year anniversary at Bouquet Restaurant this month. I've had my eye on this place and I really wanted to love it, but unfortunately I just didn't. The staff & service was great! Everyone was friendly and helpful & knew the menu well. The dishes looked beautiful & you could tell that the chefs in the kitchen are skilled. The restaurant itself was beautiful, I enjoyed all of the decor & ambiance. Our waitress brought us sparkling wine to celebrate which was so nice & delicious. We both decided to order the tasting menu so we chose two options for each of the 3 courses + dessert, because we wanted to try all of the things!
1st course: We got the tartine - I ordered it because I thought it was real ceviche, but just chopped melon, it was ok. We also got the panzanella - delicious flavors, but the focaccia bread was difficult to chew.
2nd course: wagyu beef meatballs - interesting flavors, then it dawned on me that it tasted like a Big Mac. A deconstructed, very fancy Big Mac with elevated ingredients. Hey. I like Big Macs, it was yummy & the only protein we really enjoyed. We also got the shrimp & grits - good but way too salty.
3rd course: hubby ordered the sakura farm denver steak & I ordered their famous maple leaf farm duck. That day, I learned that I don't enjoy duck & my husband learned that he thinks farm to table steak tastes too gamey. Neither of us finished our dishes (I finished his steak lol). The waitress looked surprised & offered us boxes, we declined.
Dessert: if I could do it all over, I would've ordered a charcuterie board, meatballs & every dessert on the list. We chose the chocolate peanut butter bar & the cookie trio. Both were phenomenal. The golden moon milk with the cookies was heaven in a cup, more of that please! & I'm a lover of anything chocolatey & nutty so my bar was divine. The dessert was definitely the best part of the entire meal.
While each dish looked gorgeous & appetizing, we felt there was just too much going on with each dish. Ingredients we couldn't identify, sauces that didn't pair well. Sometimes a simple dish done well, is better than complex. Something we missed was some starch to balance all the acidity & strong flavors. Some potatoes with the steak would have been nice, some noodles with the meatballs maybe? Something starchy & comforting to hold it all together. Overall I'm still grateful for the experience. We still left smiling, I enjoyed taking photos of the pretty dishes & we couldn't stop laughing at how 'difficult' we apparently are to please.