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| - I'm not a fan of fusion restaurants. It always seems to me like it's an identity crisis for the restaurant and they start out with good intentions, and veer off to the mediocre. We tried Bear & Bottle last year, and while it was OK it didn't make me stay away.
We visited last night, and this visit pretty much said meh. The problem with menus that offer the same meat that takes a long cooking time, you must keep the cooking spices pretty bland. I mean you have to use the same meat for a Japanese dish, Mexican dish and American dish. You can't be too specific.
I didn't care for the menu, it just seemed too...too trendy. Like if I were one of those hipsters who goes out with a party of friends, and the conversation is more important than what you're eating. It's sounds cool to say I'll have the "Pork Belly Bahn Mi," or "oh yea it was great, I had soy glazed pork belly."
I settled on an appetizer, the sliders with a side of fries. My wife had the spicy pork torta. I wasn't happy. The meat on the slider was bland, dry and not quite heated up. Warmish. Some more time in the microwave might have helped. The caramelized onions were cold, and the only flavor was delivered by little bit of blue cheese. It was incredibly boring.
My wife had the spicy pork torta sandwich. I tried some of the meat off of her sandwich, and it was the same pork used on my sliders. I was pretty cranky, because I was hungry and I pretty much had to force myself to eat one slider, I started on the second but I just couldn't finish it. I didn't want anything else on the menu because I didn't care for anything else. I was cranky because of the $9.00 we paid for the sliders, and I could have gotten a better product at Perkins. Or for the same kind of flavor that this slider had, I could have had a little hamburger at McDonald's for a quarter of the price. Cranky.
Friends of ours seem to like this place, and will I be back? Sure, but I'll be sure to eat somewhere else first. Or maybe I'll try and steer them someplace else. In the end, I'll say this won't be my first choice to eat, nor a second choice. There are too many places in the neighborhood that deliver without the pretentiousness of this place
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