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| - I preface by saying: we wanted to like this place. We can bike to it, it's family-friendly and did i mention that it's close? It is busy even before 6pm. Parking is only achieved through luck or valet. Kudos to word getting out about Arcadia Tavern. But...
REVIEW
Uninspired bar food in a clean, open, friendly atmosphere. Lack of imagination is clear in the tired sports grill theme - aging fratboy paradise. Might as well be a chain. Then the execution might be tighter. The pizza was basically Freschetta ultra-thin crust, made to order. Almost looked like the pizza in the Nutrisystem commercials - undercooked and topped with processed items.
Fish n' Chips usually deserve their own paragraph. These get 2 paragraphs, but for the wrong reasons:
Fish n' chips batter should be bound to the fish at the molecular level. Attempting to peel the crust off should result in tearing away fish flesh, or revealing fish that is crispy around the edge with the bound batter unwilling to separate. Fish n' Chips don't bend! Cook hot, cook fast, cook through. You can easily achieve this at home with a Waring fryer. A decent batter and a properly used commercial fryer should be a slam-dunk.
Anatomy of an unacceptable fish n' chip: hunk of barely cooked through whitefish, surrounded by a loose layer of mushy batter than is not bound to the fish at all, with a fried-looking but barely crisp outer edge. I removed the end of the fish stick and shook it and the lump of fish fell out of the sad greasy tube. No discernible flavor unless dunked in the accompanying restaurant supply grade tartar slop.
Tots? A moment of inspiration? Sadly no. The key to a tot is that it's made up of little distinct chunks of potato. Like a tiny hash brown capsule. You should be able to break them open and pull apart the pieces. Fast food can even pull this off - the Taco John Potato Olé for example. These were more like greasy, fried mash potatoes. And salty. I'm not drunk enough for this.
I want to give it 3 stars for being clean, having decent service and having no less than 20 plasma displays. But 3 is A-okay. I think there might be something A-okay there, but we haven't found it yet. We will return to try the sliders just to see if there is a dependable fallback dish for those nights when we just don't feel like cooking and want somewhere close. In the meantime, if the owners (investors, more like) care to be more than just the next thing to FAILBOAT in that space, they need to get back to the food. Once the buzz fades, the food will not bring people back. Go to Four Peaks Tempe. Go to Matt's Big B. Go to George n' Dragon. Go to Lo Lo's for chrissake. Go see how simple food can still be good food, and not scream "short-term, dabbling in the industry business model".
Will update after another visit. Maybe.
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