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| - I want to give this place 3 1/2. I feel bad giving it the first 3 star review. I'm torn, honestly.
The ambiance: cute, cozy. I love it.
The location: Lawrenceville. I love it.
The service: great, wonderful, attentive - my glass of water was always full and as soon as my cider was gone she asked if I'd like more.
The food quality: also wonderful. We had:
Lobster rolls: Perhaps the bread:lobster ratio was a bit too high, or maybe it was that the bread wasn't toasted and too fluffy. I was expecting a bruschetta-type of appetizer, but still good nonetheless
Macaroni and cheese: I love comfort food. Mac n' cheese gets 2 thumbs up.
Beef on Weck: Really good, but the roll was really hard to chew.
Fluffernutter: we just had to. Fancy restaurant. Marshmallow banana sandwich?...and it was probably my favorite dish. It was almost dessert like.
Hush Puppies - meh, kinda dry.
Turducken - the corn bread stuffing was great, and the sauce was drizzled over definitely contained cranberries. I loved it.
For dessert we got the beignets and the moon pie. This was the only point I was dissappointed in the food quality. I've been to NOLA, twice. I've had the beignets. These were NOT beignets, and on top of that, they tasted like burnt chocolate. Ugh. The moon pie, while good, elicited the following question from one of the members of our table: "Were these just taken out of the hoho's box?" They also had some weird (green!) mint liquid drizzled on top.
Ok, so the food quality was great, for the most part. But the price for the food...and the amount of food you get was not. We spent over $120 for 4 people and were still hungry. I wish there was more on each plate. Especially the turducken (2 pieces?) and the Beef on Weck. They should specify that each dish really serves only 2 people. We were told this was tapas-style, and most tapas dishes at other restaurants serve at least 3.
I wanted to love this place so bad! It's owned by the same people who opened Verde, which I love and will go back to again and again and again. But I can't say that I'll go back to Tender. Either lower the prices or increase the amount of food on the plate.
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