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| - Overall, a lovely experience, albeit on the pricey side, but with a few glitches. Despite being located in the middle of an office park, the ambience is wonderful, particularly outside. Normally, we do not eat out on a Monday, land of week-end leftovers and "B" staff, but it was my wife's birthday, so there we were. The service could best be described as "friendly indifferent." Service was provided with a smile, albeit in a perfunctory manner. Given a choice, I prefer this to overly chatty servers who constantly interrupt my meal or who gush over my wine/menu selections, but a little interaction (even just a name!) would have been nice. Particularly given that there were few diners and plenty of staff on hand, this all seemed puzzling. As others have noted, the bread and the accompanying butter plate are delicious, though I would have liked a crusty white bread selection to better enjoy the butter flavorings. My wife's sweet butter lettuce salad was lovely, and my grilled octopus appetizer was positively sublime. The octopus was tender, not chewy, with a delicate, grilled smokey taste. I just greedily wish there was more of it. My wife's wild atlantic salmon tagine was quite good, with the salmon juicy and flakey, and if not actually cooked in an earthenware pot, certainly tasting as if it had been cooked "tagine style." Moreover, my wife's request that the dish be prepared without added salt was scrupulously observed, something that does not always happen. The chocolate tart we shared was also quite good . . . which brings me to my entree, the dry-aged bone-in ribeye, "dry" being the operative word here. The meat entrees are all listed under a "Prime-wood grilled" heading, but there is absolutely no way the steak I was served, which looked like a pre-cut steak obtained from a local restaurant supply warehouse, was prime beef. In place of fat marbling, there was tough gristle throughout, and the texture of the meat suggested it had been previously frozen. As soon as the steak was served, and I rapped it with the back of my fork, I knew from the firmness of the steak that it had been overcooked (I ordered it medium rare, it came medium), but I did not fully appreciate the grim eating experience I was in for. Low body fat is admirable in a human, in a steer destined for the slaughterhouse, not so much. Nevertheless, I did not wish to ruin a fine evening with my wife on her birthday, so I philosophically chewed through my tough steak, consoling myself with the thought that the tough leanness of the meat was probably healthier for me. The steak was actually seasoned nicely, and the port reduction was a nice complement, but this was a classic case of putting lipstick on a pig: despite the seasoning, and even if the steak had not been overcooked, there was no getting around that this was a subpar piece of meat being served at a premium price. Also, while the potato hash accompaniment, was quite nice, the wild mushrooms and caramelized onion that were also supposed to accompany the dish were missing entirely. Finally, both our entrees were served lukewarm, which given the paucity of diners that evening, seemed inexplicable. Again, we did not wish to detract from the birthday celebration and an otherwise enjoyable evening in a relaxing ambience, so we stoically endured our lukewarm entrees, and I soldiered on through my disappointing steak. And one bad entree experience, particularly where I did not make my disappointment known to the server, is certainly no reason to avoid what otherwise seems like a very nice restaurant - just avoid the ribeye!
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