Overall: Load up on oysters and charcuterie. Skip the rest. Stick to wine/beer. Be mindful of surcharge when tipping. Great place to visit rarely for special occasions.
Oysters/charcuterie, 5-stars: Oysters are fresh, not saline, and paired with a thoughtful herbed vinegar. While some may balk at the price, from my experience they are competitively priced especially for an upscale restaurant. Charcuterie is the best we have ever gotten. Inspired and delicious selections, a full board with plenty of bread/veggies/fixings to pair with and even their own special chocolate salami, and at $10/item we thought very competitively priced.
Entree, 2-star: How disappointing. 4 selections with an exorbitant price range of $40-60. Basic food combinations of inexpensive food groups (e.g., potato, turnips, peas) that a modestly adept home cook could recreate with a trip to the grocery store (e.g., salmon with risotto). Small portion sizes, even modest eaters will leave hungry. Worst, they're improperly cooked. For example, we got the lamb rib rack, medium-rare. It came out with a blood seep, deep red to purple-ish meat, and no bounce to knuckle indentation (so the meat was rare to undercooked). Worse, it was way over salted. Asking the tables adjacent to us, the risotto was too dry (it's supposed to be al dente and creamy, not have individual grains falling apart), and the steak was similarly undercooked.
Salad/dessert, 3-star: Salads are fairly basic combinations, but nice. At $20 each, they're what you expect for a restaurant of this price range, albeit a bit uninspired. Go to the grocery store and easy to recreate.
Drinks, 2-star: Cocktails look amazing on paper but disappoint. My wife got an apricot gin and tonic that just tasted like syrup, for $18. Their beer and wine selections are great though (any sommelier would be happy) but this should be considered base expectations for this price range of restaurant. All drinks about $5 overpriced.
Service, 5-star wait staff, 3-star bar: Servers, runners, and hosts are friendly, knowledgeable, fast, and properly time courses. Drinks were fairly slow to come out compared to the food, even with wine arriving after we had mostly finished our entree.
Atmosphere, 4-star: Small space that is loud but in the way you want as it feels energized. They dim the lights for ambience later at night. Tables have nice warm light lamps. Could be elevated with a bit of soft background music to help manage the echo of the space.
Surcharge note: Despite the eyewatering prices, they add a 5% "living wage" surcharge on the bill. While I 100% support the concept, other places that do this (or incorporate into prices) make that clear on the menu and advise you to adjust your tip accordingly. Nope, when the server gave me the reader to pay (with the awkward hover over the shoulder), I could at minimum select 20% and would've had to do pressured quick math to do 15% to account for the surcharge. Worse, the waiter openly stated, "I wonder who gets that money", apparently unaware that they (in part) should be benefitting. My suspicion is that this is a pull-at-the-heartstrings extra charge to boost profits. read more