Ryan W.
Yelp
For the price, this place deserves one star. But even if you aren't price sensitive, it deserves no more than two stars.
Food: We did the 12 course tasting menu; none of the dishes that came out were astounding. Most of them were flat and lacked coherence as a dish. The flavors and textures often clashed in an unpleasant way. The drinks were mediocre to bad; the cucumber water turned out to be a gritty, chunky glass of puréed cucumber. Ick. My drink came with a lot of mint, which was fine except there were lots of loose mint leaves that mucked up the drink every time I took a sip.
Ambience: Truly awful. The restaurant was nearly empty on a Wednesday night, which would be fine except the restaurant is in a warehouse and the music was exceptionally quiet, making it impossible to speak above a near-whisper. The lack of ambient noise was unsettling, especially for a 3 hour+ meal.
Service: The service was mediocre to bad. Our waiter was mostly good, although he lacked the true attention to detail that I expect in a restaurant of this price. At the table next to us, the waiter left a dish for one person at the table, then left the other person's dish on the serving platter while he went to get their drinks; he was gone for about 10 minutes. Finally, the worst part of our evening came when we paid: the restaurant's credit card machine was down. We were asked if we had any cards with raised numbers on it (not sure why this would have helped). We offered a debit card; they said they needed it to be credit. So we had no way to pay the bill; embarrassed, we counted up all the cash we had on hand, which was actually a substantial amount because we had just gone to an ATM. However, it was only about 3/4 of the bill price. The whole process of paying took over half an hour, as the waiter went back and forth to discuss the situation with his colleagues. Given that the lack of a payment method was their fault, I honestly would expect a restaurant of this level to comp the meal. However, we offered up the cash we had. But rather than immediately accept and apologize, the waiter continued to keep us waiting at the table while he called the owner. At a top-tier restaurant, there absolutely must be a manager with decision making power at all times, if the waiter himself can't make the decision.
Overall, it felt like this restaurant was operated in a lazy and haphazard way. When your customers can flag several ways to immediately improve your restaurant, you're doing it poorly.
