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| - Like the Esquire article that launched it, Kalu tries to be punchy and cultivated but falls flat on its face. The restaurant is a grab bag of everything fashionable - high ceilings, natural wood, sushi, supertight denim, tapas - but is far less than the sum of its parts. From the moment you walk in, you are immersed in a disjointed hodgepodge of styles that never resolve their differences.
My biggest complaint is the food. At a fundamental culinary level, the food is fine. It is edible and it doesn't taste bad. Cool. But if you want to be a tapas restaurant, you need dishes that lend themselves to being shared. Two pieces of chicken divided by five people equals three empty stomachs. You also need to bring food in a timely manner so that there are not massive pauses between bites. Like many of my fellow reviewers, I left hungry. I'm sure Kalu could have sated my appetite but it would have taken another 2 hours of measly plates and I frankly didn't have the patience.
Secondly, the service. If you want to market yourself as upscale your servers need to speak like adults. Direct quote: "Like, you know, the chicken is, like, in this sauce, like, with a curry that's like not hot to meeeeee but like I can handle spice so like I don't know." I don't mind high school kids at Applebee's, but come on.
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