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| - Graffiti... What to say about this place. I guess I could go with a blow-by-blow with regards to what my impressions of the place were and how they evolved as the night/meal progressed.
Initially, I did have high hopes given the reviews, but the menu did seem to be a bit lacking and a bit weird, maybe even lacking true inspiration at first glance. But I figured, what the hell. Why not try it out. Maybe the food might be better than the menu is letting on.
Graffiti is a bit of a hole in the wall, with a patio in the gentrified area that is otherwise known as Battery Park. Parking is on the street. Good luck finding it, it's a bit tough to find parking if you want the car to be near the restaurant, despite the restaurant being really the only commercial space in the area.
Nothing really special about the place. Kind of a bar setup, but it's also set up to dine in like a lunch or dinner. My company and I ordered the calamari, charcuterie, shephard's pie, and oyster po'boy. Beer selection is decent, but we didn't take a part in the alcoholic offerings.
I've been sitting here and really have been trying to wrap my head around the food they served, but I can really best say that what they serve is stuff that is really hard for anyone to really screw up from a cooking standpoint. I'm not saying that Graffiti didn't get it wrong, but I feel like it tried to do interesting spins on more traditional dishes when given the opportunity to especially the po'boy and the shepard's pie. The charcuterie and calamari can't be messed up, really, with regards to prep. However, the bread served with the charcuterie seemed to deep fried or at least drenched with oil before being dehydrated crispy, as opposed to bread being spritzed with some oil and then baked crispy. In addition, the amount of bread was nowhere near enough to accompany the various meats on the platter, and a lot of the chicken paste (substitute pate?), sliced and cured meats (prosciutto, etc.) ended up being eaten straight, which was very salty and wasn't very appetizing. Calamari was acceptable and nothing to really write home about.
The main dishes were the big turnoff. I'm assuming that due to the mundane dishes that are the po'boy and the shepard's pie, they tried really hard to do their own spin on the dishes, and it really don't work all that well. The shepard's pie was a large chunk of braised lamb(???) placed on some root vegetables, a block of mashed potatoes, and maybe some small semblance of crust. (Inverted shepard's pie???) The lamb may have been braised and had some flavor, especially the outer portion, but it definitely wasn't moist as you'd expect it like coming from an actual shepard's pie. It was pretty darned dry, and within the cut of lamb, it doesn't taste much other than just gamey. It just felt that the shepard's pie was a completely wrong label for what was served. The fried oyster po'boy was just fried oyster stuck in a slice of folded white bread. Pomme frites that were supposed to be in the dish were deep fried julienned potatoes that are basically potato sticks and nowhere near the fries you'd expect from the description of the dish. The champagne greens were probably best part of the dish heavy on the vinaigrette. Overall, the po'boy was buried under the greens and matchstick potatoes as if saying "good luck finding your po'boy and oysters." Honestly, it's as if hipsters were trying to cook, but were actually somewhat successful in cooking something, or cooks trying to cook like hipsters, which is even worse.
What probably gets me the most is that the foods they cook are those that have a high tolerance for being hard to screw up, yet for the price, you'd expect something different and really good, but it really isn't. It's almost like they're looking for inspiration in all the wrong places. As the result, my gut feeling looking at their menu online really was spot on. I'd give the restaurant a 2.5 for being decent eats and not screwing up the food, but I am also wanting to give a 1 star for being a restaurant that just doesn't have its stuff together, and really not wanting to come back here since it was so unsatisfying, especially for how much was spent for the dinner. So 2 stars it is, and, frankly, that's rounding up. Sorry, guys, but it just didn't work out for me or for the guest I had with me.
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