Chanele R.
Yelp
After hearing all of the hype, my friend and I were happy to be able to get in for dinner one evening. Unfortunately, the experience was thoroughly disappointing. Like the food was not even cooked - and not on purpose - disappointing.
The ambiance was great, with soft candlelight and a lovely setting, but that is kind of where the "great" ended. The service was perfunctory, and I didn't feel like we were much of a priority. The server almost left before we even had finished ordering, just taking the food orders and almost stepping away before we could say we wanted wine, too.
The food was where they fell off a cliff. We ordered shrimp crudo and a burrata dish with fried eggplant. The shrimp was very blah, and my friend noted that she has had a lot of shrimp crudo and this was the worst. But the other dish.. wow. When I picked up a slice of eggplant, I noticed it was not just not fork-tender, but I couldn't cut it with a knife. That is because the eggplant was FROZEN SOLID. (I have to admit I was seriously worried that we had just eaten raw shrimp from a kitchen that couldn't properly cook eggplant, but I am still alive to write this, so...) We could not get anyone's attention, so my friend had to get out of her chair and flag someone down. They immediately whisked it away (as well as my share plate that had my portion of burrata I didn't get to finish), and they returned later with a short "sorry" and a new plate - that was noticeably smaller in portion than the original. (It is wild they couldn't just replace the whole portion but did some weird accounting for the prior portion of burrata, which you took before I could eat anyway!?) While this new dish tasted good (the eggplant was delightful once actually.. you know.. cooked), it was surprising at a restaurant with this reputation that no manager came to apologize or even address the issue. I didn't expect the dish comped, but no discount was offered, and it was never really mentioned than a brief "sorry about that," like they had accidentally served the wrong glass of wine, not gave us severely undercooked food.
In the end, we left $80 poorer for 2 small plates of mediocre food and 2 glasses of wine, which really was not worth it at all. (Plus we were both still hungry, ironically.) We were not dressed up (because we hadn't initially planned to go there), and I really hope that is not why we were treated as we were, especially in one of the most welcoming areas of the city. I could not help but notice the table next to us were treated much better, even being offered oysters on the house.