Alba U.
Yelp
We ordered from The Porch through Seamless last night on New Year's Eve, a pretty wide sampling of items. We'd been excited to try it for the first time. Some of the items were really good, but some were good-eh and a few others were really disappointing. (Details, below**)
This felt like dejá vù because we've seen so many new neighborhood spots billed all way above their actual fighting weight, as "destination" restaurants and then they just chug along under the guise of that notion without finding their way and eventually fold. It's really disappointing cumulatively because it's happened so much.
With The Porch, we really hoped for something great because they're right in the neighborhood and have music too! And we've heard GREAT things about their music. We hope with our heartfelt and detailed feedback, that perhaps we can assist the management in forestalling the fate of so many who chugged along before?
**Details re our dinner last night -
We ordered the smoked fish board and the mac and cheese with beef brisket to start, a full rack of ribs, with corn maque choux as a side, an additional appetizer house salad to round things out.
What was great (with caveats):
The smoked fish (chose the maple salmon). Both the salmon and the trout were absolutely delicious. But the portions were a bit chintzy for the price. The creme fraiche and crackers were enough for the amount of fish that in our opinion would have been appropriate for the dish.
The beef brisket was AWESOME. (Unfortunately the mac and cheese it came with was pretty eh, and totally cold when it arrived, which was weird because we live literally across one street from The Porch. Of course these things happen and we can warm stuff up, but this little detail was a bit of a turnoff.)
What was pretty ok and tasty but a little leaning towards meh:
The mac and cheese. As stated above it came cold. But beyond that, it didn't really measure up in flavor, to what you'd expect from a kitchen that knows how to cook well to be brutally honest. This is Harlem. We have Soul Food and French inflected African restaurants which do Southern, Creole, and French style mac and cheese all over the map here. We kind of expect a little pizzazz and more importantly, The Porch promises more in their marketing materials and menu layout. This dish was leaning too heavily towards meh, in our opinion.
The ribs. The ribs were chintzy in amount. For a whole rack of ribs ($38) - seven small baby back ribs is just not cool. They were also a bit dry and hard with some delicious sumptuous bits here and there to remind us what they could be like. The flavors were nice. The sauce was a little over sweet and there was a bit too much of it, it almost seemed like as a compensation for how little there there, there was in portion size and preparation.
What was mildly edible but more meh than good, not restaurant quality in the least:
The Cajun corn maque choux. It was watery and low on seasoning. I just don't know how you take these ingredients and make something that tastes like a you threw together some frozen veg in a pot and heated it up for a bit?? I could literally saute the ingredients myself in five minutes with a little salt and pepper and have done a better job and I am not into cooking but I do it pretty ok when I take the time.
What was totally meh and really not edible:
The House Salad was described as an interesting mix of flavors with an yummy dressing it wasn't even adequate as a plain house salad just for a little roughage. The mixed greens had several clumps of gone wilted to the point of runny and yucky pieces, the dressing was literally without any flavor, there were no herbs of any identifiability unless they meant the almost off mesclun, the roasted fennel may or may not have been present but there was something soggy and flavorless that could have been weirdly steamed onions or fennel, and the watermelon radish was beautiful to look at and crunchy but just kind of overpowering flavorwise when thrown in with this terrible salad. I'm loathe to be harsh but dang I was so unimpressed, disappointed and tbh kind of embarrassed for the place actually delivering something so utterly meh.
Guys: we have a lot better options for stuff in this realm in the neighborhood. We have Charles' Pan Fried Chicken, we have Chick-Inn, we have Fumo Harlem, we have Harlem Public. I think there's more but I'll stop there. For something totally different, but amazing I say try Handpulled Noodles.
Look, I miss the days of Copeland's and St Nick's Pub, both of which had great music. The food at Copeland's was The Real Deal and you could even get a MUCH BETTER MEAL than what we had from the Porch at St Nick's if you showed up on the weekends when the lady who used to bring home made soul food dinners to sell happened to have shown up. I DO think The Porch has a viable mission to fulfill and I certainly hope they will. BUT DO BETTER (continuing in a screenshot as a photo)
