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| - We really wanted to like Mint Mark since we love the Bristol in Chicago. Sadly, although the food was quite good (some dishes almost as good as the Bristol), the management of the restaurant was so frustrating as to really color our meal.
Breakdown:
Food: 4/5
Drink: 2.5/5
Service: 2.5/5
The food was pretty inventive and some dishes were very tasty. The highlight was the "surf and turf", a perfectly done scallop paired with a blood sausage with a texture strikingly similar to the scallop. However, the serving was a bit dainty, two scallops would have been better since the ratio of scallop to sausage was uneven.
Other food notes:
Kale salad - excellent sweet croutons; kale could have been massaged more so it was less fibrous
Charred broccoli with Meyer lemon- amazing smoky flavor, could have used a little more lemon and the broccoli could have been a tad crunchier.
Salmon rillette on nutmeg muffin- delicious smoky flavor, muffin melted in your mouth
Ravioli- pasta was cooked perfectly. Mustard green filling was a bit overpowering, it would be better as a pistachio-mustard green pesto filling for a little more subtlety and complexity.
Escargot- very tasty, buttery lemon sauce with charred bread to soak it up
Roman gnocci with mushroom ragout- the worst dish we had. The gnocci, which is cooked like polenta, was a flavorless blob, the mushrooms were nowhere to be found, and the ragout tasted mostly like tomato sauce.
Dessert -
basque cake: served as a slice not an individual cake, and you could tell the slice had been reheated quickly since it was a bit burned on the edges. But amazing flavor- basque cake is what the Bristol is known for so nice it's featured here.
Posset- cream and sugar set with blood orange acid. Tasted like a creamsicle. Needed a bit of mint or something else bright on top for garnish.
Now, drinks: a disappointment all around. Completely uninspired cocktail menu and a shabby beer selection. Saving grace was that the bartender was happy to mix a drink off-menu.
Finally, service -- when we called to see about reservations (they don't take them, which is a bad move given the size of the space), the hostess told us if we came at 6 on a Friday the wait would only be 15-20 min. Apparently she told everyone else that too because when we showed up it was completely packed. She told us the wait would be 30-40 min but we weren't seated for an hour and ten minutes. By the time we were, the restaurant had almost emptied out. The food was brought out all at once, although it's small plates, so we felt incredibly rushed to eat everything quickly before it got cold. Even though we waited for over an hour for a table we were done with dinner and dessert within forty minutes. Water wasn't refilled either and we weren't asked if we wanted another drink until we had finished dinner. Our waiter was very nice and it was clear the restaurant was just understaffed and the floor poorly managed. But the extremely poor service was so frustrating it was very hard to enjoy the meal.
In sum -- food is good, we really hope they get their act together with the service and get a new mixologist.
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