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| - Some friends made reservations for us after the opera and and based on the description of "American-style Dim Sum" I was pretty excited. But I thought it was "Grits and Grace", so I was imagining Asian-Southern dim sum: carts coming around with spicy chitterlings, country-fried chicken feet, and kim chee style collard greens. Some fried-salted szechuan crawfish, and of course cheesy grits with bacon and jalapenos. Maybe even a small fried peach pie, or a plate of pecan tassies to polish things off
It is not "Grits and Grace", it's "Grit and Grace". Obviously my disappointment at that is my problem. But honestly, the praise this spot gets is mystifying to me: the dim sum aspect of the meal was perfunctory, the service was poor, the food was expensive, and the quality of the food ranged from from inedible to good-enough.
First, the "dim sum". I love dim sum. At my favorite spot for dim sum, Hei La Moon in Boston, you sit at a table while cart after cart of delicious delicacies comes by. Nearly all the the little steam baskets have at least 2-5 individualized servings, or plenty to share. You and a few friends stuff yourself with a half-dozen to a dozen uniquely tasty things, while drinking tea, the servers stamp your card, and when you're stuffed beyond reason, and you get the check everyone marvels at how inexpensive it was.
Grit and Grace has a card with 5 options on it. A server came by with a tray exactly once over the 1.5 hours we were there. It had 3 of the 5 options listed on the card, and we took one of each. The beef tartare was fine. Fried capers? Why not! The roasted eggplant was adequate. The pork belly bites were spicy and greasy. Yes, I know it's pork belly, but I expected "melt in your mouth", not "coat your mouth with spicy fat". The meat that was on the belly was chewy in an unappetizing way. None of the portions were really shareable, except the pork belly, and that's mostly because no one really wanted to eat it.
We also ordered several things from the main menu. Everything on the menu sounded delicious and tasted disappointing. Hunger is the best sauce, and I brought it, but the main sauce Grit and Grace believes in is chili and salt based. There were also some inexplicable bitter things. The smoked brisket was extra-fatty. The seafood sausage, for $16, was slightly less than half of a sausage cut into 4 bite-size pieces. It was actually pretty good (not special, but good flavor); however, the portion was miniscule for the cost. Seriously: $16 for half-a-sausage. If it were $5 and on the dim sum menu I'd say it were great, but as an entree, that's ridiculous.
We also ordered the braised daikon, crispy tofu and stuff. The plate that came out was beautiful, with artfully arranged daikon, baby bok choi, and "essences". The essences took the form of foam, and had two natures: spicy and flavorless. Most importantly, there was no tofu. They brought it out 5 minutes later and mumbled an apology. There were four wafer-thin triangles. I'd guess about two ounce of tofu, on a main course, for $17. We also got a tiny bowl of kim chee for about $8. Tiny.
Our reservation was at 10:30, and by 11:30 we were the only people there. Despite that we barely saw our server. Fortunately (please add sarcastic emphasis), everything came out at different times, so I was able to order a couple cocktails. "This One Could Use a Few More Ingredients" was pretty good. Were never even offered desert (really, no desert?), and they brought us our check at 11:45. When we got out, around midnight on a Friday night, the streets were empty and though we were still hungry, there was no place in sight to get more food. I think I saw a couple tumbleweeds blow by.
We went home and heated up one of those ham and emmental cheese tartes from Trader Joes. It costs $4.49 and was better than anything we ate at Grit & Grace.
But I still like the idea of a Asian-Southern-America Dim Sum place: someone please get on that.
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