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| - Many things about Michael's are lovely. Like the marble-floored entrance, the big, comfortable wing backed chairs, and the O.G.red walls with low lighting. I'm a sucker for that stuff.
Other nice touches are the absent prices on the ladies' menus, the champagne and sorbet palate cleanser, and the salad making and dessert flambe'-ing performed tableside by waiters dressed much better than the clientele.
Dishes we loved were: the French onion soup, crab cake made with actual lump crab, authentic Caesar salad, and giant lobster carried out and presented on a silver platter that would have seated 3 children comfortably.
Not so much: the veal was pretty mediocre, and the breading on the Francese was soggy and falling off. The scampi came with no pasta, and the Coquilles St. Jacques was not gratineed to a nice golden crust; rather the scallops were just plopped into a kind of gloppy cream sauce with mushrooms and a ring of what we hope were mashed potatoes around the rim. Nope.
Martinis were served with the extra in glass pitchers; a nice touch if you like martinis.
I prefer an icy cold Diet Coke myself, but they only had Pepsi products, and they were in bottles. Uh-oh, you know what that means. No free refills. I know this isn't a place you go when you're looking to stretch a dollar, but they were making an enemy of me, which isn't easy to do when you happen to be the proud possessors of a three story dessert cart. They kind of made up for it with the little tray of complimentary chocolate-dipped fruit, but who did they think they were kidding with that fruit basket? You might get a few die-hards nibbling on the grapes or cherries, but does anyone finish a five course meal and find their mouth watering at the sight of a big raw apple?! Talk about anti-climactic.
Anyway, bottom line: Michael's has great old-school ambience and wonderful service. Some of the food is quite good, but when you are dropping close to $200 per person before tip, it needs to be great. All of it.
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