The good news is that Match is not the stereotypical hotel dining room type of restaurant. You know, those places that charge 5-star prices but make you wish you decided to go to McDonald's instead? What Match has going for it is a sparse but interesting menu that looks and tastes good and is surprisingly reasonably prices considering the hotel it's in is walking distance to exactly only one other restaurant (Fez across the street). So having a captive audience does that mean they have to try harder or not try as much?
I ate there twice, once for dinner on a Saturday night and again for brunch on Sunday morning. We were staying at the hotel (a staycation - reviewed separately) and purposely chose to eat at Match despite having plans to go downtown for an event later that evening.
Match is relatively casual and informal with pretensions that it's "all that". They breathlessly advise you to make reservations because they tout themselves as the "busiest restaurant in Phoenix" or something like that. Well at about 7 PM on a Saturday night the place was about 70% empty. Yet the pretension continued when we walked up to the desk without reservations and got that "OH! You don't have reservations. I'll see if we can find a table for you". HUH? What about all those empty ones over there? Whatever.
So they "found" us a table. I had chicken because I had a taste for it. It was basically the piece of meat with some stuff scattered around it. It was a dichotomy - dry and tough but really tasty. KFC won't have to worry about the competition. My dining companion had a Cobb salad that was pretty big and loaded. We both had a chilled avocado/melon soup that was remarkably good.
The next morning we both had Salmon Benedict. It wasn't bad (I mean how bad can you screw up poached eggs over an English muffin?). The poached eggs were kinda bizarre though, big white puffy perfectly round mounds ... two of them, like Hostess Sno Balls. They were just too perfect looking, like they were mass produced. The salmon (lox) wasn't the most flavorful but it was okay. But for whatever reason the eggs were served on the same plate as a green side salad with Italian dressing on it. Weird.
What keeps Match from being outstanding are the people who work there. After being open for 10 months they still seemed to be dazed and confused like it was opening day, either not knowing or not caring what they were serving. For example the server asking what style of eggs I want for the Eggs Benedict ... um, sweetie, if the eggs aren't poached it's not really a Benedict, is it?
The nail in the coffin was the "open" kitchen, which must have sounded to the owners like a great idea. But not when you can hear the chefs arguing about how much to "upcharge" a customer for a substitution. Cringeworthy! They seriously need a manager on duty to whip this staff into shape.