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| - Husband and I were invited there for a double-date with a girlfriend of mine who was in town visiting and her beau... now this is a FAR more expensive place than we would normally go for dinner, but the other couple was choosing so we went with it. I found out in advance and went into it thinking it looked overpriced. Is that Heist's fault? I guess not. However, for what we paid, I feel like it was a total rip-off. I might not have minded one expensive night out if the food had been really stellar. It wasn't.
Now, it was lovely inside. Really cool, even hipster atmosphere and you could see into the brewery like an aquarium. The only thing I'd change are high backless stools at tall tables-- looked nice but very uncomfortable for a lingering, tapas-style meal. My husband ended up "stealing" me a different kind of chair from another seating area :)
I am pregnant so I wasn't drinking, but my husband ordered the darkest beer that they had (forget the name). It being a brew-pub, he had pretty high expectations for the beer, but was disappointed. It wasn't awful, but it was not memorable, so not worth the price-- and he's used to spending more for craft brews. I had water. Boo for not having anything more interesting than standard fountain drinks for non-drinkers... I understand most people will be there to drink but at least throw in a nice spicy root beer/ginger ale or house-made lemonade. There was a lemonade cocktail so I thought they'd at least have that. But the only options were Coke&Sprite.
On to the food. At the risk of sounding pretentious I'd call the menu "ambitious but not well-executed." As others have said, this is a tapas-style place (in terms of portions, not flavors... not a lot of olives/hams/cheeses here) but the quality of the food was WAY out of proportion with the price. Everything came out at different times, which sort of encouraged us to all order something and share it with the table. However, this was awkward because most dishes came out in sets of three portions! Not good for a double date lol! Someone always got left out of trying something. Then there was the question of the bill... the guy we were meeting was clearly trying to impress his girlfriend, ordering the priciest things... lamb meatballs and lobster mac and cheese... we spent half the meal nervous that we were going to have to split the bill 50/50! So we didn't eat much of "their" orders, but since everything came out at different times, often it was only one thing on the table. Made it awkward and I was STARVING! Again, is this the restaurant's fault? Maybe not; but I've been to tapas places before and things came out at a much more even pace.
I got some kind of flatbread with spinach dip. It wasn't bad at all but not the best I'd ever had, and pricey. My husband got (burned) limoncello wings (btw, someone inform the bartender/chef it is spelled limoncello, not lemoncello. Sheesh). He also got some cold Ramen noodle chicken salad thing with Sriracha... it had no flavor and practically no chicken. Gross and very unsatisfying. I had a bite of the lobster mac. It was oily, the cheese was congealed, and was literally black and burned on top. I also got some kind of cheesecake bites... there was a sad, bruised, brown mint leaf on all of 3 them and they tasted like something you'd buy frozen at a grocery store. I could see clearly into the kitchen from my seat and it looked there was only one poor guy in there-- no wonder everything came out so slowly and was burned!
Final strike-- it was trivia night, which was fun but so. darn. loud. that we couldn't hear each other talk! Nobody really signed up, it seemed, so the host kind of forced everyone in the restaurant to play. It was a fun trivia contest but we were shouting across the table the whole time. Just skip this place-- we spent at least $40 for, basically, gross snacks and walked away hungry!
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