Josh T.
Yelp
Chairs. They're something you take so much for granted at any restaurant, but you never realise just how much a bad chair can really PISS YOU OFF until you suffer a whole meal through one.
The reviews on Yelp have been pretty mixed, but quite a few of my friends profess much love for Lolla. I can only conclude that those people are slimmer and taller than me, because quite simply there's no way for anyone who doesn't fit both those requirements to sit comfortably on one of those.
They're like bar stools, high enough that I can't sit with my legs at 90 degrees, and without a rest so you can't mitigate the height. They're narrow, so that even my not particularly generous frame felt a bit precarious.
It just makes no sense that a person that wants to provide you with a memorable dining experience would put chairs like that in their restaurant. And that really just taints the entire experience. Because to me, a person that's genuine about wanting to give you a memorable meal would take everything into consideration. Chairs. Lighting. Temperature. Everything.
As for the food at Lolla, it's really not that great. Decidedly three stars (and I took one off for the chairs), the signature sea urchin pudding was indeed delicious, but not perfect nor novel. The sea urchin was almost superfluous, and the star of the dish really is the squid ink pudding. It's rich, velvety, and so flavourful. The uni really just provides a slightly salty-sweet offset, but really so many other things could have possibly done that.
The scrambled eggs with bottarga. Brilliantly cooked scrambled eggs, just slightly runny.The bottarga was generously heaped on the eggs, and the combination of chicken eggs and mullet eggs did work pretty well. It was a big plate of eggs, and while pretty tasty, I wouldn't go back for it.
The duck fat potatoes were, well. Good potatoes. Crisp on the outside, and fluffy on the inside, they were plenty tasty. But, I've have good potatoes elsewhere, so it's hard to understand why it's a signature dish here.
For the meat dishes, the braised beef shortrib was well cooked. The meat was very tender, but it wasn't that unique in terms of flavour. Something that I could've done at home with a pressure cooker and time. The beef tongue escalopes were, well fried but the taste wasn't that amazing. In fact, by the end of the dish, I was actually quite sick of it. The grilled squid, like a dozen other grilled squids, well executed definitely, but the broccoli puree did absolutely nothing in terms of flavour.
Even the much vaunted donuts with lemon curd was vaguely disappointing.
I will say that service was pretty good, and the staff member serving our table was friendly, fairly (but not very) knowledgeable, and generally present whenever we needed assistance.
It was odd though, that my companion was told she couldn't put her bag on the chair next to her, even though throughout dinner the chair wasn't used, and the woman sitting on my other side put her bag on the chair between us without repercussions.
I think you can easily tell that I'm not a fan of Lolla. The food was slightly above average, the service good, but that chair. Furniture like that says "my food's so good I don't care if you're uncomfortable", and unfortunately, it's not.