BvBPL
Pour Decision Maker
Two Questions:
Are you perturbed by the excess of specialty martinis out there?
How much can you tell about a restaurant based on its bar and bartenders?
--
Everyone, at least everyone worth conversing with, has a story about how hard it can be to find a decent drink. My story starts with my folks taking my girlfriend and I out to dinner one night. We hopped into my folks car, left the Commonwealth and crossed into Perdition, err, I mean Connecticut. In hindsight, I should have recognized this ill omen from the start. We rolled up on this fusion restaurant to eat at. For those of you who dont know, fusion means they serve sushi as well as regular person food. Eating at a fusion place is like being an unsatisfied bisexual: the meat youre gnawing on might be nice, but youll always wonder how that piece of raw fish at the other table would feel in your mouth.
We walk in, put our name in for a table, and go to the bar. The décor of the place is brightly colored with sharp lines and some 40s and 60s ephemera along with some artwork. It generally looked like an art deco TGI Fridays which sounds tackier than it really was. The bar was a long piece of blond wood with curves, no real angled edges. Personally, I am of the opinion that bars should be of dark wood, preferably walnut or possibly cherry, and have ninety degree angles unless you are the Hard Rock Café or someplace similar, but thats really just an opinion. As long as the booze is wet and the ice is cold, I dont mind it so much.
So we saddle up to the bar. I notice that they have my favorite gin, Hendricks, behind the bar and I order a martini. Unfortunately, getting a bartender beyond a curved blond bar to pour a proper martini in a neo-art deco fusion restaurant is apparently exceptionally difficult. My interaction with the bartender went something like this:
Id like a Hendricks martini, please.
Are you sure you dont want a special martini? We have several available like the (and she goes on to list a bunch of drinks that might interest a sixteen year old girl).
No, Id just like a regular gin martini.
Ok do you want that dry, or dirty, or anything? (note that a bartender who actually knows her gins would not offer a dirty Hendricks martini because Hendricks is garnished with a cucumber, not a olive. I dont generally expect bartenders to know that though.)
No, just a regular gin martini, please.
Why must I be subjected to this when I am ordering an iconic drink? If I was dithering or otherwise indecisive, or if I was asking her opinion on what to have, maybe then Id accept a laundry list of over-sugared martinis, but I wasnt. I was sure of what I wanted before I walked in the door, and I think I look and act like someone who knows what he wants from the bar. What the heck?
This, of course, leads into question one. What is with all these specialty martinis, like the chocolate martini and the apple martini? Why did it suddenly become hip to put Apple Pucker in a martini glass and call it a martini, and what would be wrong with just making that same drink in a tumbler? Someone, somewhere must be making money on the selling of sugary drinks to people and calling them martinis. Generally I wouldnt care, but when it interferes with my fine drinking experience, it becomes my issue.
So I get my martini, and it is decent, and we get our table, sit down, and look at the menu. Of course it is full of ambitious but somewhat nonsensical food, like a juniper rubbed steak. Actually, I had the juniper rubbed steak and it was quite nice, but frankly it is hard to make a bad steak, assuming you start with a good slab of meat (they did) and dont over work it (they didnt; the juniper was nice and subtle). Ironically, my gin martini was a very nice complement to the juniper rubbed steak. I dont recall the specifics of my companions, but looking at their menu gives you an idea of the stuff they serve:
-Veal Bolognese (Why someone would make Bolognese from veal is beyond me)
-Orange & Coriander Chicken (served, bizarrely, with a yucca salad)
-Grilled NY Strip (Labeled as choice grade. Well la-de-effen-da. Theres also a how to order your steak sidebar on their menu which is, of course, a hallmark of fine restaurants everywhere)
-Maple-glazed scallops (why? God in heaven, why maple and scallops?)
-The sushi menu, which is tuna, tuna, crab, tuna, tuna, salmon. Wheres the uni and the squid?
They also have a thing for scapes, which are green garlic shoots. They are yummy, but I dont see why they need to be in every other dish. Or rather why they have to be announced as being in every other dish.
So, an ambitious menu, but the food itself was frankly forgettable once you ate it. Id rather see their chefs focus on doing basic items well and getting their chops than doing zany stuff like shrimp w/ pesto pearls (which actually sounds like couscous tossed w/ pesto).
So, onto the second question. All in all, the place seems to focus more on style than substance, just like the bar and the décor. So how much can you tell about the food of a place from how the bartender interacts with customers?
Thoughts?
Are you perturbed by the excess of specialty martinis out there?
How much can you tell about a restaurant based on its bar and bartenders?
--
Everyone, at least everyone worth conversing with, has a story about how hard it can be to find a decent drink. My story starts with my folks taking my girlfriend and I out to dinner one night. We hopped into my folks car, left the Commonwealth and crossed into Perdition, err, I mean Connecticut. In hindsight, I should have recognized this ill omen from the start. We rolled up on this fusion restaurant to eat at. For those of you who dont know, fusion means they serve sushi as well as regular person food. Eating at a fusion place is like being an unsatisfied bisexual: the meat youre gnawing on might be nice, but youll always wonder how that piece of raw fish at the other table would feel in your mouth.
We walk in, put our name in for a table, and go to the bar. The décor of the place is brightly colored with sharp lines and some 40s and 60s ephemera along with some artwork. It generally looked like an art deco TGI Fridays which sounds tackier than it really was. The bar was a long piece of blond wood with curves, no real angled edges. Personally, I am of the opinion that bars should be of dark wood, preferably walnut or possibly cherry, and have ninety degree angles unless you are the Hard Rock Café or someplace similar, but thats really just an opinion. As long as the booze is wet and the ice is cold, I dont mind it so much.
So we saddle up to the bar. I notice that they have my favorite gin, Hendricks, behind the bar and I order a martini. Unfortunately, getting a bartender beyond a curved blond bar to pour a proper martini in a neo-art deco fusion restaurant is apparently exceptionally difficult. My interaction with the bartender went something like this:
Id like a Hendricks martini, please.
Are you sure you dont want a special martini? We have several available like the (and she goes on to list a bunch of drinks that might interest a sixteen year old girl).
No, Id just like a regular gin martini.
Ok do you want that dry, or dirty, or anything? (note that a bartender who actually knows her gins would not offer a dirty Hendricks martini because Hendricks is garnished with a cucumber, not a olive. I dont generally expect bartenders to know that though.)
No, just a regular gin martini, please.
Why must I be subjected to this when I am ordering an iconic drink? If I was dithering or otherwise indecisive, or if I was asking her opinion on what to have, maybe then Id accept a laundry list of over-sugared martinis, but I wasnt. I was sure of what I wanted before I walked in the door, and I think I look and act like someone who knows what he wants from the bar. What the heck?
This, of course, leads into question one. What is with all these specialty martinis, like the chocolate martini and the apple martini? Why did it suddenly become hip to put Apple Pucker in a martini glass and call it a martini, and what would be wrong with just making that same drink in a tumbler? Someone, somewhere must be making money on the selling of sugary drinks to people and calling them martinis. Generally I wouldnt care, but when it interferes with my fine drinking experience, it becomes my issue.
So I get my martini, and it is decent, and we get our table, sit down, and look at the menu. Of course it is full of ambitious but somewhat nonsensical food, like a juniper rubbed steak. Actually, I had the juniper rubbed steak and it was quite nice, but frankly it is hard to make a bad steak, assuming you start with a good slab of meat (they did) and dont over work it (they didnt; the juniper was nice and subtle). Ironically, my gin martini was a very nice complement to the juniper rubbed steak. I dont recall the specifics of my companions, but looking at their menu gives you an idea of the stuff they serve:
-Veal Bolognese (Why someone would make Bolognese from veal is beyond me)
-Orange & Coriander Chicken (served, bizarrely, with a yucca salad)
-Grilled NY Strip (Labeled as choice grade. Well la-de-effen-da. Theres also a how to order your steak sidebar on their menu which is, of course, a hallmark of fine restaurants everywhere)
-Maple-glazed scallops (why? God in heaven, why maple and scallops?)
-The sushi menu, which is tuna, tuna, crab, tuna, tuna, salmon. Wheres the uni and the squid?
They also have a thing for scapes, which are green garlic shoots. They are yummy, but I dont see why they need to be in every other dish. Or rather why they have to be announced as being in every other dish.
So, an ambitious menu, but the food itself was frankly forgettable once you ate it. Id rather see their chefs focus on doing basic items well and getting their chops than doing zany stuff like shrimp w/ pesto pearls (which actually sounds like couscous tossed w/ pesto).
So, onto the second question. All in all, the place seems to focus more on style than substance, just like the bar and the décor. So how much can you tell about the food of a place from how the bartender interacts with customers?
Thoughts?
