| rev:text
| - L'Albatros, my beloved L'Albatros! How have I not reviewed you yet?? I am incredulous, appalled, ashamed of myself. In fact, I came here today with the intention of adding a follow-up five-star review to a previous five-star review, but discovered that, to my horror, said review had only been written in my head! So let me try in some small way to rectify my sins. Because, dear reader, L'Albatros doesn't just deserve one or two glowing reviews. They deserve a love note.
We have eaten here perhaps 6 or 7 times now, and, once or twice just for wine and cheese. Every single experience has been exceptional. We now trust L'Albatros with no lesser events than anniversary celebrations and New Year's Eves, and know we could bring even our most demanding out-of-town friends. The food is delicious, creative, and varied; the patio is absolutely lovely (the inside of the restaurant is also handsome, albeit in a more spare way); the cheese tasting is a revelation; and the service is not only the best in town, it is extraordinary by any standards.
To start with that last item: going out to a meal here is like going to a spa. The wait staff is incredibly knowledgeable, friendly, and attentive; it helps to that they tend to hire adults rather than teenagers, and one has the general sense of intelligence and dedication to craft. Without ever being the slightest bit intrusive, the servers make sure your water glass is always full, bread is on your plate, and the napkin is re-folded if you leave mid-meal for the restroom. The details they remember about your preferences are rather mind-boggling. For example, the last time we had dinner here, a previous fromagier--from a meal we had months prior--dropped by our table to say hello, and asked us how we liked a more recent iteration of a particular cheese that he had served us before. How many customers had he served in the interim? Seriously: these people are the nuclear physicists of waiters. This last visit happened to be for an anniversary, a fact which my fiancé mentioned when he initially made the reservation. And although we wound up having to reschedule that celebratory dinner (moving it several days forward), the host had nonetheless conveyed the date to the wait staff--for not only our own waiter but several other people wished us a happy anniversary while we were there. Nor did this even feel like a command performance; wishes were conveyed and a friendly and low-key way. Clearly it is management policy to make sure the guests feel recognized; but equally noticeable is that the wait staff performs its duties with such good will that one feels confident about the larger operation.
The several dishes that I have had have all been quite excellent. As a pescetarian, I always appreciate vegetarian and fish dishes being well represented on a menu as they are here. The trout is wonderful with the light almond crust, the Nicoise salad is just perfect, and I have dreams about the scallops. And the cheese plate. Where do you even begin with the cheese plate? The experience of sampling 3 or 5 or 7 cheeses alongside a cocktail or glass of wine is so total that it is almost a pity to eat a meal afterwards. Indeed, to call it "wine and cheese" does not begin to convey the wild ride you go on when you dive into the cheeseboard: salty, buttery, caramelized, blue veined, crystallized--from the most delicate sweet cream to the muskiest of barnyards: whatever you could possibly desire in a cheese, you can find here.
At the risk of reaching the point of diminishing returns, I will simply add that I love their herbaceous cocktails, that the patio is certainly the best on the east side, that the creative selection of small plates allows for tapas-style eating as comfortably as it allows choosing an entrée, and that they clearly want a diverse clientele to be comfortable here. Thank you L'Albatros, for being the best restaurant on this side of town, if not in fact the best restaurant in Cleveland.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)