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| - I've lived behind this place for several years, through all of the hype, and while we did set foot inside once, never stayed. With no ideas in mind, and desiring a great place to go on the B-day, I convinced everyone to take me out to Cure boasting it was "one of the finest restaurants in the country". Yes, totally hyped and not very good. I had a much harsher review in mind when I was at the table, but I figure just giving them one star is enough.
I'm a foodie. I like the fact that they cure their own meats, but now that I've had them I can't say it was a mind blowing experience. This restaurant does not deserve to be in the top 20 in the USA.
I understand you shouldn't expect the same sort of culinary experience from a restaurant like this that you would at a corporate experience, but one thing I found extremely lacking was the main course. For $29, you expect more than a dressed up duck leg with "inklings" of sides. The chef must have been out of the office that night because the preparations were all very messy.
As we sat down we were immediately offered "water or a sparkling water", not realizing we were ordering a bottle of sparkling water for $5. Waitress #1 offered me a sample of the "smoky porter", but didn't give me a chance to try it before she returned within 1 minute to ask if I was happy with it. Immediately, she realized her mistake. I just felt rushed in the beginning, so if she or her manager reads this, she needs to build rapport and relax a bit, we were obviously there for the long haul not a quick lunch, I mean c'mon we had reservations.
First, we ordered the signature "Large" salumi board. It looked nothing like the pictures on Yelp. The thing was piled high with stuff, but the stuff was all haphazard and they buried the mustards and just jumbled everything up, unlike the pictures. The girl who was describing what each of the items were just couldn't figure out what the stuff was anyway, because it was all mixed up and messy. The crostini was store-bought right out of a bag they probably bought at one of the Italian groceries, and was _not_ made in-house. Huge disappointment the choke-on-this crostini and the lowest quality item we received.
It was so dark we had to use our phones to even see the food. Other tables did the same, the place is so dark you're eating grey and brown splotches from the darkness and have no idea what the visual quality of the items are until you turn to flash photography. What a waste of 20% of the senses.
For an Italian-American-owned, Mediterranean-themed place it doesn't deliver anywhere near the quality of a real Italian place. We left hungry, my father joking he never got his main course. He said he enjoyed his fish but couldn't identify the rest of the meal and so he didn't eat it. I realize Pops is a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, but I agree the small portions were not the croix of the problem -- or at least not the only one.
My girlfriend mentioned to me that the founder, Severino, refused to friend her on Instagram. We took a look at it. The food he makes for himself looks to have way better portioning and is just more visible than anything he serves at his restaurant. If I had received a typical meal he makes for himself, I probably wouldn't have felt so cheated out of the $29 for what was basically a deep-fried duck leg.
My main course: duck leg deep-fried and crispy. (Confit) Great, but there was little else on the plate other than that awful trendy way chefs splooge their purees. Whomever made my plate decided that the "espresso horseradish sauce" that was supposed to surround the duck should be the main color in the palette, because there was more of that than there was anything else. And let's be honest, it's the horse-sh!t sauce: brown, chunky and smeared. It tasted like a fresh horse radish dressing you would have for way less money somewhere else. If you want to know what it was like from a culinary standpoint, the consistency and color just happened to be exactly like what you would see in a dirty diaper.
( http://usercontent1.hubimg.com/2216782.jpg )
Mash potatoes with your $29 duck leg? No, just a tablespoon full of white puree probably made in a Vitamix blender. After listing all 20 or whatever ingredients / purees / whatever the heck pretentious dipsh!ts call this crap-fu, the "other" waitress couldn't answer a simple question I had about the green smear near my duck. I asked "is this a puree made from garlic or are these chunks of cheese?" She said she had no idea but both.
For the $200 we spent on the truncated dinner (table of four), we could have feasted on the same great farm-to-table food in the comfort of my own home. All in all, the options are low, the goop on the plate is not enough food, the flavors while complex are not all that interesting, and aside from the fact that they cure their own meat, all they're really there for is to drain your wallet and soak you in pretension.
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