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| - Like all the other reviewers have said, this place looks good when you walk in the door. It's got a fresh feel and is relatively inviting. The bar is well stocked and there is plenty of sunlight that beams into the restaurant through the massive wall of windows.
We stopped here for lunch after unsuccessfully finding the Dim & den sum truck in the area. Let me start off by saying that the offerings on the menu look incredible. I have found more restaurants recently with mediocre creativity displayed from their chefs. You will not find that at Naya Bistro. Most of the dishes have really interesting flavor combinations and there is an incredible a depth of vegetarian options that you simply don't find at many restaurants these days. It is clear that the menu is well thought out, which I give props for.
The problem came with the execution of the food. It took us a solid ten minutes to figure out what we were going to sample for our lunch. My friend at lunch is a vegetarian, so he went with the Baked Eggplant with goat cheese and tomato puree to start. I started with the Carpaccio Sushi with blue cheese and roasted peppers. We decided to split the Mushroom Pita and Vegetable Burger since we were both interested in those dishes and the manager said that both were good sellers.
The eggplant dish was clearly marinated in some type of oil based marinade. It arrived and looked nice on the plate, but had a very greasy feel. The best bites are those that are completely loaded with tomato and goat cheese, otherwise it just tastes like some heavily oiled eggplant. The tomato puree was under seasoned, probably intentionally since it would be expected to be eaten with the goat cheese which is naturally salty. The goat cheese ran out before the eggplant or the tomato, so the last couple bites just tasted blah.
I was psyched for my Carpaccio Sushi. It arrived looking great on a very cool plate which separated out the sweet soy. There were six rolls on the plate. I asked the manager for some chop sticks to which he replied that they had none, work it out with a fork. Strange, right? Buy some cheap chop sticks- the dish looked great, why tarnish it straight off the bat without the proper utensils? Anyhow, that wasn't nearly the biggest issue with the dish. It is made with what they call a wasabi risotto. It was a risotto, but not wasabi and the rice was so undercooked that it was almost painful to eat. The blue cheese was non-existent within the rolls. I disassembled a roll just to see if there was blue cheese there, and rest assured there was not. What happened here? The concept is so cool, but the execution so poor. What a disappointment.
Well, we were still looking forward to the pita and the veggie burger. The manager told us that the burger was made in house, which is pretty cool. Most restaurants simply use a Morningstar burger or something. The plate showed up and the kitchen took the responsibility of giving each of us half a burger and half a pita. The manager never asked what kind of fry we would like, so they gave us both sweet potato and regular fries. The good news is that both types of fries were great. The kosher salt on the sweet potato fries was just the right amount and the regular fries tasted like fair fries- really fresh.
The veggie burger looked great. You could see the broccoli and cauliflower in the patty itself. There was what they called a spicy vegetable spread on the burger, but most of it was absorbed by the bun. I scraped some off with my knife, it wasn't spicy at all. The burger could have used a lot more of the spread though since it was dense and gummy. The flavor was good, but it was sort of like eating vegetable spiked paste. I was glad that we split the burger. Eating a whole one would have been hard to do. We were in agreement that this was a dish to pass on.
The moment of truth: the Mushroom Pita. The manager said that this was one of the best selling dishes on the menu, literally flying out of the kitchen. We asked him how he liked it and he replied that he was allergic to mushrooms. Ok. It is described as a braised mushroom stuffed pita with smoked gouda and crème fraiche. The mushrooms tasted like they were canned. You know, rubbery, flavorless and generally lacking in all respects. The mushrooms were plated on top of the arugula, which sogged out into a watery green mess. It said smoked gouda but was almost non-existent, so didn't add anything to the sandwich. The crème fraiche was just all right- it was really thick and tasted more like sour cream than crème fraiche. After two bites of the sammy without the crème fraiche, I smothered it with the sauce and it was only marginally better.
This restaurant should really have received one star based on the food that was delivered, but they are trying something that many other places won't even go near so I gave them a second star.
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