Freyja H.
Yelp
This used to be a really special restaurant. One of those places that never misses--where the food is not only excellent, but innovative and delightful every time, and where the host and servers and bar tenders make you feel cared for. I went there a few weeks ago and was surprised both a the quality of the food and the service. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great. The service was scattered--for example, our oysters arrived in the middle of the meal rather than at the start, as they should--and our server seemed distracted. For an average place, that would have been ok, but not for this place, where both food and service were always precise and stellar: you felt taken care of by the staff and the food seemed made especially for you. And this is how it should be, given the price (last night we spent $200 on 2 drinks, some small plates, and dessert).
I went again last night thinking I might just have experienced an off night. But it was significantly worse. We had booked an 8:45 table, but there were also 9:00 seatings available on Resy. We were stuck in significant traffic, so we called to say we'd be 10-15 minutes late. We were told we'd better review the menu and have our order ready as soon as we were seated. When we arrived it was clear that service was going on and there was no need to rush--our server didn't seem concerned about timing, and wasn't particularly attentive. My drink was fine, but my friend's drink was poorly mixed and not sufficiently chilled. We ordered half a dozen oysters. We received 9 oysters, and when we pointed this out to the server, instead of saying "oh, our mistake, go ahead and enjoy them!" she yanked the plate away, took it to the kitchen, and then it came back with 3 oysters gone and big holes around the plate! Charming. And I guess those 3 oysters were going to be served to someone else? Classy. Several of the dishes were ordered were sold out. Fair--it was late. Those we could get were slapdash, over salted, and poorly presented and delivered. We ordered a roasted pepper, crab, and chorizo dish that was awful--chorizo overpowered the whole thing, there was very little crab (which couldn't be tasted anyway because there was so much chorizo), and the peppers were tasteless and watery. We ordered an angelfood cake for dessert. It was drowning in a cloyingly sweet strawberry slurry (like you'd get at a boy scout picnic or something), with a mountain of whipped cream on top. I could have done much better buying an angelfood cake at the grocery store. Really, really disappointing. This was one of my favorite places, and I won't be going back.