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| - Above average joint, some truly unique offerings but a few operational issues.
Came in for an 8.30 Friday night dinner -
The Great
- Service: these folks are a rarity amongst their peers - courteous, hospitable and helpful. They look you in the eye, they're not awkward, they smile, they seem genuinely happy that you are dining with them, they're not brusque/"too cool for school" and they cheerfully offer a thorough but non-rambling overview when explaining the two asado prep styles for the uninitiated. Waiter + hostess both top-notch. Chapeau.
- Amuse: Branca's ode to Argentinian street food. Their riff on chipá is a delightfully fluffy and buttery pocket of dough filled with cheddar. Wish there was more cheddar. Wish we could have more then two, could have easily put away a basket of these suckers. Heaven.
- Sepia: smoked cuttlefish app is perfection. Gives the infamous grilled octopus at Bar Isabel a run for its money in the cephalopod department. Great smoky flavor throughout, texture/hardness is just right, obviously skillfully prepared.
- Scampi: good size (roughly 4 fingers knuckle-to-joint), Icelandic origin offers comfort to those wary of faux-scampi from Asia but is a questionable value proposition at $34/four.
- Harissa sauce: small pot is deceiving, $1 buys a lot of sauce here. Nice mulchy texture, heat gathers rapidly and stays hot enough to make it interesting if you employ eyeball-sized chunks at a time. Not just "white people hot", this thing had a real nip to it.
- Wine: Despite its Argentinian heritage, Branca's wine list is regionally diverse and well thought out. Snobbish oenophiles who are loathe to consume New World will be glad to know that Old World is over-represented and that the wine program has made some very clever choices from France, Italy and Spain. Also enjoyed a bone-dry, light, and capital E excellent value cava.
- Panqueques: three rolled crepes, each roughly the size of a gordo cigar, moderately spread with dulce de leche - this is the type of dessert you're still thinking about two or three days later. Only wish that the insides were FILLED with dulce de leche instead of the light-handed approach Branca is currently taking. Accompanied with a generous dollop of some curiously flavorless (did someone forget the vanilla bean paste?) and unsweet chantilly cream. This dessert is great but has the potential to be life-ruiningly decadent if only Branca was amenable to some tweaking.
- Interior: shout out to the whimsical flamingo bathroom wallpaper, wallpaper game on fleek. Fake Calcutta marble table game not as strong. Herringbone floor, unexpected and exquisite. Please adjust the lighting to better show off your luscious banquettes, the green is to die for.
The Average
- Cocktails: online version won't necessarily tie to what you see day-of
- Entrana: middle of the pack skirt steak, portion smaller then expected, nothing notable flavor-wise on a stand-alone basis, recommend ordering many sorts of their $1 sauce pots and to dab liberally
- Chimichurri: lacks flavor, thin and watery, dry ingredients not well-incorporated into the oil and vinegar leaving you with a mess of liquid pooling in the pot, inferior to Bar Isabel's
- Collards: If your momma is like my momma and made collards the old-fashioned way with fat back, ham hocks, bacon drippings and neck bones, then Branca's version just won't do. Skip it.
- Golden Dome: this dessert is more about looks (some artfully plated petals and gold flakes and impressive enough that it will almost remind you of the time you saw Dome of the Rock during Taglit) then chocolaty deliciousness. Skip it.
The Heinous
- This place turns into a madhouse close to 10PM when late night eaters/drinkers arrive. The interior is rectangular and tables are positioned lengthwise with a runway bisecting the restaurant for the staff. This leaves a modest amount of square footage at the front of the house to corral folks waiting for a table and most seem to lack the self-direction to gather around the bar and tend to cluster in heaps around the hostess stand. Unfortunately, diners seated on the banquettes lining the walls are then treated to a show of 12-15 folks frowning, hostile and accusatory glaring, aggressive rolling of the eyes, enough sulking to rival a besmirched tween girl, sharing one glass of cava among three, squatting on the ground like common vagrants, etc etc. Extremely repulsive to have to look at this cattle-like spectacle and detracts immensely from a dining room that otherwise maintains an overall sense of order and decorum. Branca needs to revisit their process design and must learn how to decouple these groups and create queue buffers along the bar or better yet, make them wait outside if they can't act like people.
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