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| - Merchant is a restaurant/bar with fancy internal decor and outdoor seating in the spring and summer months. I went there for brunch and was extremely impressed with what I got: eggs benedict and this chocolate/cherry custard thing.
The restaurant is best experienced if you like drinking alcoholic beverages. I don't, so all I had was iced tea, and I couldn't enjoy a lot of the stuff behind the bar. (They have all these liquor bottles lined up horizontally in 1930s gangster movie fashion.) The drink menu is evidently famous: a multi-page flip-through booklet with many complicated drinks that certain consumers try to replicate themselves. NOTE: even though my teetolater (sp) ways affected how much I could enjoy Merchant, it did NOT affect how much I rated it here, so relax.
At ANOTHER restaurant, I had a pretty horrible eggs benedict a week ago with sauce that was pretty bland and hopeless. The sauce is the make or break, and it was incredible here. Fellow diners were envious, too, over my cherry/chocolate custard dessert, which I almost didn't order until I saw people make a fuss over it when another table got it, and I walked over to confirm "visually."
So why a star off? Cheese curds were mediocre and inconsistent. Overly salted, and one plate arrived with yellow cheddar (preferred) and another with white cheddar (non-preferred). This makes it hard to know whether you'll want cheese curds if you have strong yellow/white curd views like me.
Bonus: if you love to buy liquor, there's a "bourgeois" liquor store attached to Merchant. Photos attached. Great if you're a "dinner's over, but the party's just beginning..." type. Overall, I recommend Merchant highly!!!!
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