Sherry C.
Yelp
We were so looking forward to trying this restaurant after reading all the reviews so my experience was a bit let down from my high expectations. Here are the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
The Good-
+ Great atmosphere, rustic and cozy with a nice real wood fireplace in the middle of the restaurant for ambience.
+ Yummy cocktails and special drinks, reasonably priced. We thoroughly enjoyed our cidertini and Brandy Alexander. They also have a good selection of local beer and ciders on draft and bottles/can.
+ Prompt seating and tentative servers.
+ The Calamari appetizer was delicious, crispy fried with picked slaw and fresh greens and Sriracha mayonnaise sauce.
+ Kid friendly - they don't have an official children's menu but they offer pasta dishes that are better than your typical kid's menu. We ordered pasta Alfredo with sausage for my son, it was so delicious (maybe the best entree from our dinner experience... I'll get into that later).
The Bad-
- Pice... Yes, I was aware ahead of time that this would be an expensive experience, but $42 for 4 pieces of seared scallop with white beans was a bit much for me. Granted it was well seasoned and cooked, I would expect it to have bigger portion or came with garlic bread or something else.
- I love Asian dishes, so when I saw that they had a ramen special AND a Thai noodle on the regular menu, I thought to myself that these people are confident with Asian cuisine so I can feel good about ordering... I WAS WRONG. My Thai curry pork noodle was mediocre at best. Yes, the pulled pork was tender and flavorful, but that's about it. The egg noodle in the dish was very one demensional, doesn't have great texture and didn't absorb the sauce well. The Thai sauce needed a kick or spice. The price wasn't bad but the dish was not good. I was disappointed for sure.
The Ugly-
- It's true I'm a ramen snob. I love my ramen and when I see ramen on the menu, you bet I will be ordering it! Unfortunately for this miso beef ramen dish with kimchi on the menu, it was a huge miss. I'm totally open to new flavor or interpretation of the classic if you can make it delicious, but to my dismay, this is not the case. First of all, there's not much of a soup base and it doesn't taste much like miso, a bit too sweet too. There wasn't much beef in the dish; it was good, but nothing to rave about. They used the same noodle in my Thai noodle dish as the "ramen". Clearly they did not understand what kind of noodles qualifies as ramen! Ramen noodles need to be thinner to be able to pickup the flavor of the soup base and have chewy texture to give that satisfying feeling of meal in a bowl... None of that here.
- Perhaps the biggest offense here is the "kimchi" advertised on the dish. We asked for it on the side because the ramen was for my daughter and she doesn't do spicy. To call it "kimchi" was false advertising... It's more of pickle vegetables, without chilli flavor, no fish sauce, no napa cabbage. It was okay, but not kimchi.
We may just got the 2 wrong things on the menu, given the popularity of this place, I'm sure they have other delicious food. Unfortunately for us, our experience were not the best. If you do come, I recommend staying away from their Asian fusion dishes.