| rev:text
| - I haven't been here in a while, but I've heard that Adam is doing great things as head chef, and they did steal away Lola's charcuterie expert. I stopped in for a snack and a beer. The beer and charcuterie was great, but the rest of the food kind of sucked. I'm going to go back in hopes that this was just an off night since I do love this place a lot.
First, service was fine. No complaints there at all. The food was the issue. I ordered the broccoli raab, wild mushroom bisque, pickled pork shoulder, and the charcuterie board.
The wild mushroom bisque was creamy and it had good mushroom flavor, but the soup had formed skin in the bowl. It seemed odd for it to skin so fast even though it just came out of the pan. I stirred up the soup and all was well, but I did find it to be slightly over-salted. Not bad enough to complain, but enough to take notice.
The broccoli raab was an absolute mess. The dish contained about 3 ounces of overcooked broccoli raab soaking in two inches of oil and covered in sea salt. It was inedible. The sea salt was overpowering and crunched with each bite. The veggies were incredibly limp and, of course, greasy. Broccoli raab, being a bitter veggie, didn't help this concoction. This was a huge failure by whoever cooked the dish.
The pickled pork shoulder looked great. The chetnuts, lardo, and greens all made the dish look very inviting. Everything packed flavor except for the pork. It was flavorless. To go from over-salted food to flavorless meat was quite surprising. The texture over the entire dish felt like well-dressed lunch meat, but with even less flavor in the meat than I would get from the deli. I'm not sure of the process for how the shoulder was cooked and pickled, but someone forgot a step along the way, I'm sure of it. If not, this recipe needs some major work.
The charcuterie board was the standout. I miss the some aspects of the old board that would have contained proscutto and other salumi items. This board seemed a bit more french in nature. But that's a nit pick complaint because the board was amazing. But that's to be expected since it's essentially Lola's old board--it's made by the same guy.
I think what bugged me the most was watching the kitchen do its thing. In the past, when I had a good food experience, the kitchen always seemed to be operating with some discipline and skill. In this visit, I saw the line eagerly working to close up shop even though the kitchen was to be open for four more hours. Everyone was goofing off and playing on their cell phones. My food shouldn't be drowning in oil and salt if there's time to play around. It also struck me as odd to see a large bag of commercial peeled garlic. That never used to be an option for Cento, and rightfully so since there's a huge difference between fresh garlic and something peeled in a factory. Garlic is the most used ingredient int hat place as far as I know. While easier to use, changing the garlic to something packing less power is troublesome. That small change tells me things might not be moving in the right direction overall. The cured meat department is certainly going good, and I'm sure the pizza is still awesome, but everything else may be in need of some revision. I'll pop back in for a full dinner soon enough since the current menu looks great--it's the type of menu I want to see. I hope I just hit an off night and everything on that menu strikes the right balance of flavor that I didn't get this time around.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)