Scott B.
Yelp
Overall, the M Room suffers from amateurish execution and fails to live up to the standards set by competitors in its segment. I do not recommend them to anyone, nor do I plan to return.
I went here with my wife towards the end of January to celebrate my birthday -- what could go wrong with a tasting menu crafted to reflect the process of making the (delicious) eponymous whisky?
A lot, as it turns out, but let's begin with what went well: the cocktails! ...or their flavors, at least.
We sprung for the cocktail pairings for $140pp, which buys you one half-portion cocktail for each of the 9 plates. The presentation, flavor and cohesion with the dishes with which they were served aligned with my expectations. Well south of, say, the Aviary or even Violet Hour, but better than your average Chicago steakhouse. I would order any of them as a solo drink and be happy with it.
Unfortunately, the pairings and flavors were only acceptable in isolation, falling apart in the greater context of the entire 9 course meal. We found it impossible to drink them quickly enough before the next course arrived, slowly accumulating a table-filling pile of increasingly watery and out of context drinks that we could not down quickly enough.
As far as the food is concerned, the M Room is a failure on every dimension. At this price point, you're competing with the likes of Oriole, Schwa, Next, Moody Tongue, etc. and you'd better be clearly better than, say, Sepia.
Unfortunately for this restaurant, they're less of a legitimate competitor in this field and more of a delusional walk-on hopeful. The progression and pacing of the menu is nonsensical -- we'd receive a delicate seafood dish that can be consumed in seconds followed 10 minutes later by a savory dish that requires more time to eat, only to be interrupted by the next dish coming out before we could appropriately enjoy it. The Wellington, clearly intended to be the centerpiece of the menu, was improperly butchered. One end was about 70% of the width of the middle, resulting in an uneven temperature throughout. There was also a massive pile of duxelles rolled up on that end, but not enough in the middle. Again, this kind of amateur mistake simply does not happen at competing restaurants.
Similar execution problems abound with the service. The restaurant fails to realize their goal of having servers float among sections to keep the process consistent. Instead, I felt suffocated by about two dozen unnecessary trips, one of which had the server -- without asking -- messing with the brightness of the (admittedly very cool) table light that I had just turned down. Their descriptions of the dishes, of all things, were among the worst I've ever seen for a complex tasting menu. Wrong and later corrected, unconfident, rushed and generally lacking in polish or professionalism. Fortunately, they did seem friendly and accommodating. A for effort; I still left a $200 tip.
Overall, just save yourselves from the disappointment and avoid this failed experiment.