I tried Rare Earth for the first time as a solo diner. Often a good way to get the take on a new restaurant. I sat at the bar which has surprisingly uncomfortable seating. Really hard seats that cut me in the back of the knees. The wine selection is nice. Not big but two or three choices of each variety.
I ordered a glass of wine, a small House salad and a pizza.
The server behing the bar was "professionally friendly"
Then the wait began. Fifteen minutes passed and I still had no salad. I was able to get the servers attention and asked about my salad. She didn't check on the status of the salad but gave the excuse that several people had come in around the same time that I did.
Just about 3 minutes later both my salad and my pizza came out at the same time. Very disappointing. I wanted to eat my salad but I didn't want my pizza to go cold. Note: This is extremely thin pizza...like a cracker crust...so it goes cold very quickly.
The server offered to send the pizza back to keep it hot but since it had fresh tomato on it, I didn't want the pizza to be ruined.
The house salad was fresh, good mushrooms and shaved pecorino cheese. There were lots of red onions and the dressing, a house vinaigrette was very strong "and vinegary". For me the onion and vinegar were just overwhelming and I would not order that particular salad again.
The pizza had a good amount of toppings and held together pretty well, even considering how thin the crust is.
I would like to try this restaurant again because there were several things on the menu that sounded really good.
4 stars for the pizza, 2 stars for the salad that I ordered and 3 stars for the service.