rev:text
| - The two stars are for
good support of local producers and
lovely ambiance in downtown Charlotte.
The food was mediocre to bad. I had the French Onion soup and the broth tasted like it was made from Beef Base paste from a plastic tub.
I had the "Soup & Salad," an affectation of a "table-side pressed romano tea" served over a slice of bread, warmed romaine leaves, an unpleasant aioli sauce and a downright fishy tasting "boquerone." I couldn't eat anything else after eating the anchovy--it tasted pretty long in the tooth. The "tea" was unremarkable, and again, the broth tasted like something out of a can.
One of my friends ordered the vegetarian plate: nothing brilliant there. Collards were the main feature. My other friend ordered the "Winter Salad" which featured "bruleed beet carpaccio." Basically steamed beet slices with crunchy sugar on them. And not in a good way.
The waiter, although she was very helpful and pleasant, kept gushing about "Chef tries this" and "Chef believes that" and "Chef always does this other thing." If the food had been excellent, all this Chef genuflection would have been deserved. However, I had the feeling of a completely commercialized effort to exploit the concept of farm-to-table philosophy without the cooking skills to support it. There was no finesse in the food preparation (except in the presentation--the food looked pretty on the plates), or integrity in the ingredients themselves, at least in terms of flavor.
The space is beautiful, a very chic, well-concieved "forest" theme with metal nest chandeliers, fiddlehead fern flatware, river-polished stones for salt-and-pepper shakes, and a gorgeous slab of tree for a table. The chairs were generously wide and comfortable.
IMVHO, this kind of restaurant gives the farm-to-table movement a bad name: all pretense and showmanship with no integrity of serious cooking to back up the concept.
|