Category: Restaurants

As we sat in a second traffic jam caused by a rush hour accident, it was clear we would be late for our 7pm dinner reservation at Restaurant Eve. We called the restaurant to let them know, and ask them to kindly hold our table. I know that some restaurants will give up your table if you are more than 15 minutes late, and I knew that we might be. The hostess assured us that would be fine, but the table is committed again at 9pm so we will need to be done with dinner by then. Fine.

We finally made it at 7:17pm. The hostess greeted us with a reminder again that they would need the table back at 9pm. Okay. And then we waited for five minutes to be seated.

Restaurant Eve has received many accolades for its cuisine, including “Fine Dining Restaurant of the Year” by The Rammy’s  for its refined, locally inspired cuisine. Marian Burros, New York Times restaurant critique asserts this is the only Washington DC restaurant that can compete with New York’s finest.

Our server promptly arrived at our table with water and menus. He graciously told us the specials. The menu featured seasonal favorites such as ramps, sea-beans, morels and soft shell crabs. I ordered the Soft Shell crab with Ramps, Sea-Beans and a Bacon Puree, followed by Sweetbreads with King Oyster Mushrooms and Pickled Ramps.

The service at Restaurant Eve exudes an air of refinement.  The servers wear suits with ties, and even the crumb-er is a brass broom with matching miniature dust-pan.
The linens are crisp with nary a crease or fold. Through the course of our meal other diners finished their meals, and the tables were cleared and fresh linens were snapped across the table. A waiter pulled out a cordless iron, and pressed out the creases. While the next diners will surely appreciate the crisply pressed linens, the restaurant sacrificed the experience for the rest of us by this display of housekeeping.

By 8.30 we had finished our main meal, and contemplated dessert. With an eye on the time, I let our waiter know I was aware of the time restriction. “Bring us dessert and the check at the same time,” I said, knowing that this rushed type of service is not typical for such fine dining. As it turns out, the hostess had not bothered to tell our server of the next reservation, so the waiter promptly disregarded the request. By 9.10 we were still waiting for our check and I’m sure the other diners were waiting for the table.

If you ask me (and I’m sure you would have), the hostess should not have told us of the 9pm table, but instead told our waiter. We are at his mercy to make sure the timing of our dinner is expedited. We can only progress through the meal as quickly as he returns to our table for the next course.

What service oddities have you experienced at fine dining restaurants?

I recall learning about this in culinary school. Our instructors warned us of this problem – potential customers walk into your restaurant and see nary a soul dining. They think something must be wrong with the restaurant and walk out. No one wants to be the first customer of the evening. And when the first customer is seated, we were taught to seat them in the window so passers by don’t get the feeling of Empty Restaurant Syndrome (ERS).

In the past few weeks the local papers have been covering the closing of several restaurants. Most recently, Great Bay announced it’s shutting its doors. The last time I ate there, the cavernous room seemed eerily empty. Sure, there were other diners, but nowhere near a full house. And when I go to Open Table to peruse restaurants for an evening out, invariably they have the coveted 7:00p.m. table available.

I’ll be honest, ERS has prevented me from dining there more. When it first opened, they were packed. In the past 2 years (and not just when the economy soured), when I’ve consider dining there, I’m suspicious as to why a seemingly good restaurant is empty. And now it seems that a collection of people, just like me, stopped eating there for no other reason than other people weren’t either. We created a self-fulfilling prophecy and the restaurant is now closed.

My father, on the other hand, has reserve-ERS (Full Restaurant Syndrome??). He actually prefers the empty restaurants because they are quiet. As someone who is hard of hearing, he cherishes the quiet ambiance so he can enjoy the conversations with his dining companions.

Have you fallen prey to ERS?

O Ya – a Japanese restaurant on the edge of Chinatown with an American chef. It opened just a year ago to great fanfare when the New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni named it one of the 10 best new restaurants in the country. The buzz around Boston was that it rivals Oishii both in creativity, refinement and price.

I clearly don’t have a problem spending money on good food (as I wrote about  here), and if the food rivals Oishii, the place of my first culinary “petit mort,” you can count me in!

The cozy room seats around 40 people with 10 more at the sushi bar. Perched at the bar you can watch the three chefs – one for sashimi, one for nigiri, and the third for other appetizers – create culinary masterpieces. You can also peer into the spotless kitchen.

The density of the menu reminds me of the neighboring Chinese restaurant tomes. On one side of a single page menu, lists dozens of styles of nigiri and sashimi. Though, they offer traditional preparations, it seems silly in a place like this to not trust the chef’s creativity. On the other side are categories for waygu beef, pork, vegetables, chicken, truffles and a few other things.

With the least expensive nigiri at $8, I was careful in my selections to make the best choices for my money – I knew the bill would add up quickly.

The intrigue ended with the arrival of the first dish. Enoki Mushroom nigiri was served with wild asparagus and a soy glaze. The two fingers had a lovely earthy, sweet scent. The wild asparagus was a fun visual addition, but with the strong flavors of soy and mushrooms, its appeal was lost. And for $12 I was disappointed.

Two pieces of Wild Santa Barbara Spot Prawn came in at $20, and they were torched until cooked through. I had hoped for the raw creaminess that makes shrimp sushi so pleasing.

As I perused the menu for further selections, I wondered if it were possible to satiate my admittedly ample appetite for under $100. Three bite-size pieces of chicken thigh yakatori came in at $16 – though I will forgive this one for the generous slices of black truffle. I was down-right insulted when the soft shell crab arrived – only ½ a crab – also for $16.

No soy sauce or wasabi adorned a dish, nor were they served on the side. The kitchen did not send out any amuse bouche that would suggest that the $16 soft shell crab was also bank-rolling other refinements.

In the end, two of us ate 6 small plate, drank a modest $40 bottle of wine and spent $105 each. The flavors were lovely, though with small portions and none of the extra flourishes that Oishii offers, I doubt I’ll return unless someone else picks up the tab. And even then, I’m not sure… I wouldn’t want to take advantage of someone’s good nature in treating me to a meal.