rev:text
| - Had an early dinner there (5:30) last Saturday to celebrate our wedding anniversary. My partner and I are both vegetarians and had reserved the 12-course vegetarian tasting menu to share. The service was probably the highlight of the entire meal. The whole staff was friendly, accommodating, and extremely professional. I think we spoke to and were helped by just about everyone in the place, including the bartender who came over when he heard my partner homebrews to recommend his favorite beer. The atmosphere of the place leaves a little something to be desired. The decor is a bit odd and felt cheap, especially compared to the quality service we were receiving. You'd think we were in a 5-star/high-end restaurant with the level of service, but the decor just didn't fit.
The food was okay. I definitely had some favorite dishes that stood out among the others (the broccoli soup, pickle plate, rye flour pound cake, cheese plate), but the rest were just decent. I have two big complaints. 1) It seemed like a lot of the vegetarian dishes were simply dishes where the meat component was either omitted entirely, or replaced by another vegetable. Most of our dishes had no protein component at all, which was a big disappointment, especially since the restaurant seems to advertise as being vegetarian friendly. Despite the 12 courses, I left Heirloom very hungry! 2) Almost all of our vegetables were grilled. At first, I was impressed and thought it gave our dishes a nice char flavor. But after a few dishes, they all started to taste the same -- heavy on the olive oil and grilled. There are other ways to prepare vegetables! Some of the dishes could have been 10x better if the vegs had just been prepared differently.
Overall it was an okay experience. The prices were pretty high, for how I would judge our experience. I was also disappointed that our vegetarian menu cost the same as the regular (meat-filled) menu. I would have thought that the price would have been less. Our meal was a gift, so I can't complain too much, but I will not be going back to pay $120 for some grilled vegetables, no matter how good the service was.
|