Thomas M.
Yelp
March 2016
Lunch seating
Full tasting menu
tl;dr
Good service (with some fumbles), pleasing atmosphere, and excellent cocktails and sweets, but the food was very hit-or-miss.
Atmosphere:
Upon exiting the ancient and cramped elevator to the 3rd floor, the interior of La Terraza immediately strikes you. At once both cartoonish and modern, inviting and alienating, the dining room appears to be set in a Miu Miu / Jonathan Adler / Urban Outfitters collaboration. The color palate is very late-80s which is a bit of nostalgic.
Service:
The service was good. The waitstaff were distant and cool, but incredibly watchful and responsive. They had a strange system of plate management I enjoyed watching.
One gripe: cuisine of this level is supposed to fill one with surprise and delight. Waitstaff must tell you enough about the dish so you can appreciate it, but not so much that it robs you of your culinary expedition. I do not want to be told what to encounter - I want to discover it myself. Like in the Thai Peanut. Let me discover the mousse of lemongrass, coconut, and kaffir. Though I enjoyed the dish, I wish I was allowed the surprise and wonder that accompanies creative fine dining.
The food:
Overall the food was very hit-or-miss. Some stand-outs were the frozen pisco sour, shrimp chip, the disembodied shrimp, mushroom pot, the citrus dessert, and the coffee and milk. The candy bar at the end was also a nice touch. All of those were shimmering examples of perfection in their own ways, but I'll let you explore their virtues for yourself. No let's talk disappointments.
The red mullet was bland, unimaginative, and extremely ugly. My wife got one with the bloodline still coursing across it, and I got mine with some scales! My wife actually got scales (presumably from the prep of the red mullet) in a later dish, too! Yikes. To make matters bland-er, he dish was drizzled with this flavorless goop that smacked of wall paper paste, and decorated with some boring-ass snap peas cut at a boring-ass bias. I expected more than this. This made me sad.
The terrine thing? I don't know what they're calling it, and I can't seem to identify what protein it was. The taste was alright, but the mouthfeel was dry, crumbly, and mealy. Here's how you can replicate this dish at home. If you were to find a loose corner of your livingroom carpet, tear it from the tack strips, and harvest some of the foam padding from beneath it. Its the multicolored spongey stuff. Now pulse your foam in a Vitamix until you get particles about the half the size of shrew's kidney. Then, ever so gently, mist your foam bits with a solution of shiitake broth and truffle. Vacuum seal, heat to anneal (but not too much, its gotta be crumbly), and serve it at your Michelin-starred eatery.
The duck. Or was that venison? These nibblets of protein lwere drizzled with a fantastic mushroom sauce and bits of baby chanterelle and porcini. Or at least I think, I've never been good at identifying mushrooms. This is why its surprising that I'm the only surviving member of the local mushroom foray club. The protein was miscooked until it imitated shoe leather. To make matters hilarious, the waitstaff gave us both a butter knife with which to process our not-so-lovely animal lumps. Butter knives! I wish I was making this up. Brute force combined with ape-like determination helped us reduce the stubborn material into choke-free sizes. Because how embarrassing would it be to choke on overdone mystery meat?
One oddball dish was the rose. When I saw the poor waiters carrying the clanking, sputtering, fuming bell jar on top of a marble birdbath, I got nervous. I appreciate the use of dry ice and using forceps as an eating utensil. But there is something so post-vaporwave about the plating. The dish was dated, but not ironically so. Additionally, our birdbaths were rather chipped and scarred. This is presumably from newbies in the kitchen who proceed to drop said lawn ornaments when their brain registers that they are holding a small planet cooled to -80C. This didn't stop me from playing with the dry ice once I finished eating the heavily perfumed dessert.
The take home:
I am no Michelin-starred, James Beard-winning, member of the MOF. I am also not some well-published critic. Hell, I'm not even Yelp Elite! So my criticisms may seem misplaced. But this is a classic case of expectations not squaring with reality. I give the folks here all the credit for making this kind of meal happen - and at fair price! Our lunch comprised hundreds and hundreds of components and ingredients, and it can't go all perfectly. But I believe the mistakes we encountered were too elementary to be made by a restaurant of this calibre. All told, apart from the technical fumbles, I did have an enjoyable experience. I would come back for a smaller tasting menu with those offending dished removed. But the burbling rose? Keep it on.
