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| - Acadia is a buzzworthy new restaurant. The hype around it is about equal to the frenzy around Woodlot, last year. And like Woodlot, it continues the just-off-College St. trend, and probably the I-tried-it-too-soon personal trend, for me.
The Southern inspired cocktails are fantastic. Try one, try all. They are carefully concocted and exceptionally executed.
Acadia's actual food fare ranges from mildly acceptable to absolutely outstanding.
Boudin Balls with Red Pepper Honey are fried dirty rice balls with a hickory-tinged deep-red sweet-sour dipping sauce. They are life changing. You must try them.
The other game changer is Anson Mills Grits & Shrimp. This take on a traditional southern comfort dish will literally blow your mind. It's like nothing you've ever tasted before. The grits are smooth, the shrimp are perfectly cooked and the presence of oyster mushrooms and pimento cheese is subtle but definitely felt. A pool of ham hock consommé floats atop, with a soft and subdued salty and porky flavour. I had one bite when we ordered it in an array of appetizers, and knew I needed it as my main dish.
Back to the beginning now, to summarize the entire experience.
The complimentary starter plate, with a variety of lightly pickled vegetables like okra, green beans, potatoes and beets, was nice. So were the boiled peanuts it came with.
Northumberland Straight Scallops were tasty. The chicken crackling was a nice touch, since it's impossible not to love crispy skin. Chesapeake Bay Crab was just okay. I thought the crab tasted a bit fishy though. Neither are particularly memorable dishes.
I had some tastes of other mains off my friends' plates. Red Grouper and Nagano Farms Pork Ribs bites were amazing - especially the ribs. But, it was really hard to get past the portions sizes once the (beautifully presented) plates are put in front of you. They were ridiculously small for the price. It was borderline laughable. It actually left a bad taste in our party of 10's collective mouth. No matter how good the food was, it was hard to get past this.
There are a few kinks that need to be ironed out. I suppose that's to be expected for a newly opened restaurant. The room needs some life injected into it, and the service, while friendly, needs some polishing when it comes to things like pacing and dealing with a couple credit cards on one bill.
Acadia is good, sure, but it has the ability to become great. I'm looking forward to seeing what their Fall menu has to offer.
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