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| - I have been to Blue Hound five times now, once just for cocktails and four times to eat dinner, so I figured it was time to review it. I really want to like the Blue Hound, and I know people that do like it, but it has three big problems. 1) The service is too slow 2) it takes itself WAY too seriously (which leads back to #1) and 3) the plates are USUALLY tiny for the price (and there is too much variation in sizes between similarly priced items, so you never know what you're going to get. Let me expound. I have no problem with hipsters. I live downtown, it comes with the territory. I like the buzzwords "crafted", "local", and the such. That said...
The Blue Hound has good cocktails. Good, very expensive, very slow to arrive cocktails. The ingredients are quality and the drinks are inventive, but $10-$15 is just too much. I also would rather get mine quickly than watch your bartender painstakingly shave off the Mona Lisa of ice cubes and perform other elaborate rituals. Also, and the food suffers from this too, the description of the drink is way too preciously obtuse to actually divine what is in it. Here's an example: last night Sweet Pea ordered something called Thirstn Howl (pardon my spelling.) It listed the ingredients, and one of them was something called banane something or other that nobody has ever heard of before. So, you expect it to have banana. This thing came out and it was a banana milkshake.
The food, well- the food. Again, I'm a vegetarian, so take that for what it is. Blue Hound doesn't have a true veg entree, but they have a lot of veg options in their small plates. I believe that one time when I was there, they did have a veg entree, a risotto or something, but that has somehow fallen by the wayside. I would like to see it come back. Anyway, the problem with the veg plates is that they are too small for a single person to eat one for dinner (and I don't eat a lot), so you have to order a couple. And then the variation between plate sizes is all over the map, so you have to either ask your server or you have to cross your fingers. The time before last that I went there, I asked my server if the Panzanella salad was enough for me as my only food for dinner. He said oh yes! It came out, and it was a very small bowl filled with 98% hard, tasteless croutons. The "artichoke, fava beans, burnt baby leeks?" Again- it is hard to tell what it's going to be from that description, but there were 3 small pieces of each.
Last time I was there, I tried the roasted cauliflower based on good Yelp comments, and the collard greens salad (because I love collard greens), and I have to admit- they were my favorite things I've had there. Although, the collard green salad was VERY salty, and both were too oily (which is something that I find in general with BH's food.) The two of them together were enough for me for dinner, but as I said- the plates there are small. And pricey. And all over the place in terms of relative size, and you can't tell what you're going to get.
I've been with a lot of people and seen a lot of different things ordered. Lots of people get the ribs and like the ribs, and that's a big plate. Unfortunately, last time we were there, Sweet Pea (a notorious carnivore and lover of meat) got the ribs and said that he felt sick all the next day, and they were just "OK." He asked for extra blue cheese on the grits and got a "well...I can ask..." from the server. When it came out, there was a big production of saying "with the EXTRA blue cheese", but Sweet Pea said he couldn't taste it, and the grits were very bland (I heard that from too others that ordered the same on the same night also.) I've also seen someone order the scallops, which came up strangely lined up with no accoutrement on the very outer edge of a very large, oval plate, which only emphasized how little food she was getting for $20. The food comes out VERY slow.
Service: I've seen no earlier than 45 minutes and as long as 1.5 hours to get the food. That's kind of a bummer. It would be better if my cocktails were quicker to arrive and not so costly.
Anyway, I think I'm done with the Blue Hound. I really really REALLY wanted to like it.
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