rev:text
| - Almost fantastic.
Nice looking place, for sure. Tons of light wood throughout the entire restaurant, good soft lighting, some pretty interesting touches here and there.
Some other reviews mention reservation difficulty: I had no problem getting a reservation through OpenTable for the next day, and they called to confirm it about 4 hours ahead of time. The service from everyone except for our actual server was really solid; she was a bit on the confused & distracted side.
Food: pulled pork croquette, venison ragout, lamb shoulder confit with wild leek tortelloni, and the warm apple pudding.
The pulled pork was very good, not overdone in any way, just a great appetizer with top notch quality ingredients. The ragout was really disappointing and pretty much tasted like Hamburger Helper, and totally not what I expected.
The lamb shoulder confit & leek tortelloni was out of this world. Seared with some sort of cinnamon, clove, cardamom ish spices and with some fantastic tzatziki-like greek yogourt on the top, every bite was amazing. The tortelloni with it was filled with perfectly done leek. Everything about that dish was good.
For dessert, the apple pudding was incredible. Light and almost creamy, not too sweet, with caramel and sea salt on top and then dolce di mascarpone - dolce de leche folded into mascarpone cheese (!) - on top of that.
Excellent wine selection, too, a pretty wide variety of reds perfect for most of the dishes at Marben, including the Niagara red we had.
It was really a 5-star experience, other than the ragout and the server, and they could fix those things and I'd give it five stars in a second.
$150 for two, with a really good bottle of wine and moderate tip.
|