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| - I'm happy to see that a business seems to finally be making it in this location after so many have failed. Ahwatukee, the Foothills in particular, is in dire need of more dining options that aren't pizza or a chain. As a rule, I avoid new restaurants until they've had a couple of months to iron out the kinks, but I'd been hearing good things about Perfect Pear for a while, so last night, my daughter and I went for dinner. I really wish that I could say that I'm excited to return, but in truth, I probably won't dine there again.
We encountered the first glitch of the evening as soon as we entered. No one was at the front to greet us, nor was there a sign indicating that we should seat ourselves. So for five minutes, we stood there by the entrance feeling a bit foolish. I passed the time by looking at the laminated menu (which gave me pause--I understand the practical aspects of lamination, but, gosh, they really evoke places like Dennys, not a restaurant that clearly is trying to be much more than that). While we waited for someone to direct us, I made eye contact with someone working in the partially open kitchen, but he just ignored us. I told the young lady who eventually seated us that it was our first visit, and that I had no idea whether or not we were supposed to seat ourselves. I don't think she took my point.
To my relief, our server arrived almost immediately to take our drink orders. Yay!
The menu is limited to starters, salads, pasta and sandwiches, which seems perfectly in line for a bistro, and each category has good variety of offerings. On our server's recommendation, I ordered the Tukee Pear quesadilla to begin the meal. It came out to the table fairly quickly and was really big. And delicious looking--the tortilla was perfectly crisped and puffed up and contained just the right amount of its filling of pear, bacon, arugula and pepper jack. It was so good, I even convinced my ultra-picky child to try it. The spicy dipping sauce (sour cream-based, I believe) complemented it nicely. So our meal was off to a really good start.
For my dinner, again on the server's recommendation, I ordered the Wild Chop salad made with their baby green blend (kale, spinach, arugula) with salmon added. I should add here that I LOVE salad. In fact, it's kind of my litmus test for restaurants. I don't care how good the rest of the meal is, if the salad--even just a house side--is some depressing affair thrown together like an afterthought, then whoever is running the kitchen isn't paying attention to the details. That never bodes well. When the salad *is* the meal, you should expect that just as much care goes into it as any other dish.
This salad landed with an absolute thud. Sadly, the two smallish pieces of salmon were so overcooked, desiccated and hard. This poor fish had been done a grave injustice. Still, I decided to give the rest of the salad a try before throwing in the towel.
I suspect that whoever made my salad doesn't much care for them. What a mess. The greens on top were dry, making me wonder if someone forgot to dress them. There also appeared to be no thought put into the composition of the dish--the greens were randomly topped with a tablespoon or two of plain quinoa, a few long pieces of soggy cucumber and roasted bell pepper, a sad lump of crumbled feta... I took a bite of the greens and couldn't taste any pesto dressing. When I dug down, though, I realized that it hadn't been left off after all--it was all just at the bottom, alas. So some of the salad was under-dressed and rest was drenched. At that point, I just put my fork down and said, "This is pitiful."
Meanwhile, my daughter was pigging out on the huge side of seriously good crinkle-cut sweet potato fries that came with her (not) Perfectly Grilled Cheese, which, like my salmon, was terribly overcooked. We could both see that one side of it was pretty charred, but, hey, charred bread can still be tasty. Just not this time. I don't know if the spiced pear bread was a little stale to begin with or if it just suffered during cooking, but the sandwich was really tough and dry. None of the ooey gooey lusciousness I'd expected. My daughter had gamely eaten one half, but abandoned it for the fries. It wasn't until I tried a bite that I realized how bad the sandwich actually was. I let her open up the remaining half and eat the cheese and bacon. I ate some of the bread, anyway, because I was hungry.
To the restaurant's credit, our server handled the salad problem gracefully, apologizing and removing it from the bill. I had a bowl of okay tomato soup instead. I didn't bother complaining about the sandwich, since most of it was eaten.
I'd hoped that the Perfect Pear would become my go-to neighborhood place for dinner. But I just don't have faith that the kitchen is paying attention to everything that comes out of it. That's a shame.
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