Amanda L.
Yelp
I've heard really good things about this place, but I was surprisingly underwhelmed and frankly disappointed with my food here, which was disheartening!
They are clearly super passionate here about creating a sustainable farm, which they say takes 7-9 years and they are currently on year 2-3, so I know it's still early. But it's also not so early that they don't know what they're doing. They clearly have a great set up, they have a butcher downstairs preparing the meat, a whole set of garden beds, greenhouses, barns, etc. and a whole staff in the open kitchen that you can see hard at work. Truly the ambiance carries this place and is so divine, especially with their patio set up and we didn't even sit on the patio!
The interior of Sylvan Table is also gorgeous and I would give the ambiance here 6 stars if I could. But then when it came to service and food - oof. With service, I'm not mad by any means, I just think that maybe they lack in waitstaff a bit because on a Tuesday evening at 6:30 when my friend and I first sat down, our waiter was incredible and constantly checking up on us and answering all the questions we had. But after we had put in our order just for our starters, we started seeing her a lot less frequently. It wasn't until our starters came out (which took a surprising amount of time to come out) that we finally placed our order for our mains, sides, and dessert all at once. At one point she did mention that there was a huge group at the front a party of 20 or something, so I could maybe understand the hold up, but we ended up spending close to 3 hours here, which is truly unheard of so it was definitely something of note. I'd give the service maybe 4 stars.
Now for the food...honestly this was unfortunately the most disappointing part. First off, love that the menu is allergen friendly - my friend was gluten free and she had plenty of options to pick from on the menu. I would love to see more options in the way of vegetarian and vegan dishes (typically just 1 dish from each section of the menu), but I appreciate them even having options to begin with.
But overall, the food was not that great at all even though everything sounded good from the menu, but I think overall nothing blew us away and in fact, some of it we had hopes would be a good combination of ingredients, but the actual dish didn't taste that good or even went as far as offending my palette, which I feel like never happens. To begin, we got the chicken liver pate and charcuterie board for our starters. My friend and I had never had pate before, so that's on us that we really didn't like it. I took 1-2 bites of it and couldn't continue and neither could my friend. We disliked it so much, we considered asking them to take it off our bill, but ultimately didn't. Ironically, when our waiter came back to ask how the food was and we politely told her that the pate was not for us, she said that she didn't like that one either and wouldn't recommend it...LOL! OK then why didn't you say something BEFORE we ordered it haha. Charcuterie was fine, not enough meat on the board compared to the bread, cheese, and fruit offerings.
For our mains we got the short rib and monkfish and for our sides we got the patatas bravas and roasted cauliflower. In short, the sides were the best part. I highly recommend the patatas bravas and then honestly, I don't recommend anything else from what we ate. The short rib was good and well prepared. The cauliflower was again good, but came out lukewarm and not super crispy given the roast/char on it, which was texturally confusing. The monkfish was the other item that offended my palette. Whatever creamed corn, seeded, green tomato concoction they put below the monkfish did not go together and made my taste buds freak out. The sauce drizzled over the monkfish wasn't great either. It was disappointing because I normally love monkfish, its texture, and its taste!
Lastly, for dessert we got the corn creme brulee. I had high hopes because I love corn and creme brulee and could imagine this going together so well. It was OK...the creme brulee was overly bruleed, so the sugar was burnt which made each bite taste bitter. The corn added nothing and didn't blend with the creamy texture of the custard the way I expected it to.
As you can see, we ordered from every corner of this menu and for how expensive our bill was at the end, none of it felt worth it. I'm glad I experienced Sylvan Table, but I really don't think I'll be back anytime soon because I firmly believe that this place is not worth the hype. It's such a beautiful space and they what they're setting out to accomplish is so admirable, there's just a huge gap between the mission and delivery in my perspective. I might be interested in coming back in a few years maybe to see what has changed and how they have become more sustainable, but as of right now...I'm good for the time being and I'm so disheartened to say that!