Kerry F.
Yelp
Had a great date night here last night. Honestly, the food is a 3, but service brought up this rating. First impressions matter! Caprice, who greeted us warmly, introduced us to the restaurant, and brought us to our table was wonderful. I instantly felt transported out of the Ithaca restaurant scene and truly felt like I was in a nice, upscale restaurant in a big city. Thank you Caprice!
So, I need to say this next - the prices are a tad outrageous for Ithaca. 4 drinks, a $5 appetizer special, biscuits, 2 entrees, and 2 desserts came out to $140 before tip. Hmmmm. Don't get me wrong - that's a lot of a food, and we both had leftovers, but this seemed steep. That's even more expensive than Mercato, which I think is the priciest and best restaurant on the Commons.
Okay, so before I dig in here, bear in mind that they have not been open long, and I am sure are still working out the kinks.
Food Problems: I was so excited for a nice southern biscuit that I bit the bullet and bought the $7 sweet potato biscuits. They were extremely dense, dry, and flavorless unless you had a ton of the honey butter on them. Some pieces of the short ribs were dried out, but some pieces were fine. The sauce on the parppardelle was weirdly sweet. Lastly, and Big Problem here, the desserts were honestly just awful. "Creme brulee" was not even close to creme brulee. Sure, there was a custard (the "creme"), but no brulee. Just fruit on top of a small amount of custard for $9. I guess I'd call this a parfait or something? Name failure aside, it was still just okay. Our other dessert, Milk & Cookies, was aptly named, but just plain not good (basically a large, hard loaded cookie with a side of cream).
Otherwise, food was good. We liked our shisito pepper appetizer, we liked the bread service with the F. Oliver's oil & spice mix (nice touch), I liked my Soul Plate which was the certainly the best value of the night - $24 for mac & cheese, fried chicken (great), fried trout, cornbread (meh), and collard greens (really good, even though I don't usually care for them). Note: 2 people could easily share the Soul Plate, or a group could probably share this as a smorgasbord app. And we liked our drinks, which were quite tasty (though not strong).
Overall, great service by the host and by our server Gina, nice decor/atmosphere, a fun date night for sure - but I'm not going all-out here again until the food is more consistently good (and I'll probably never get dessert here again - what's the point when Madelines is right next door).