Dim Bulbs
Why do restaurant owners think that the dining public wants to eat in the dark?
Last night we were at Park Avenue Autumn for, as I mentioned yesterday, the second send-off dinner for a Thailand-bound nephew. I arrived last even though I was 10 minutes early; for whatever reason traffic was non-existent and the drive from central S.I. to 63rd and Park only took 40 minutes so everyone was waiting for me to order. I checked my ever-present black Jansport knapsack, sat down and tried to read the menu.
I say "tried" because the menu was printed in 10 point font and the room was exceedingly dark. Granted, I have had cataract surgery on my left eye and still have the damn things in my right but I wasn't the only one in the room picking up one of the candles off the table to read the offerings. It's a good thing I had read the menu online so I had a fair idea of what I wanted anyway but still, ladies and gentlemen of the restaurant world, please, turn up the lights a little bit.
A couple of weeks ago while on business in L.A. one of my dinners was scheduled to be at a strip-club-sounding Mexican place called the Pink Taco. It was loud. It was dark. Black everywhere. The menus, rather ingeniously, were black with pink font. Teeny, tiny pink font. It was fairly amusing to watch several members of our large dinner party holding up cell phones or Blackberry screens to try to illuminate the pages of the menu. I gave up, asked someone what was good there and just ordered that. Chicken tacos I think. It was mediocre but the place was packed and the locals raved about what good food they had there. Then I remembered that nobody actually eats much of anything in Southern California but they sure do like loud, dark restaurants with expensive frou-frou cocktails (this place unsurprisingly specialized in things like margaritas with Grand Marnier in them) where you can see other pretty, pretty people. Or try to anyway, since it's so damn dark it's hard to discern the truly pretty from the impostors.
Fortunately for our party last night we had more food that was truly pretty and only one thing that was an impostor. At the bottom of PAA's menu they have a section called "for the table" and one of the items listed is called "Broccoli and Cheetos". Fresh of Sunday's wd-50 experience I excitedly demanded that we order the dish figuring it would be some clever mol-gas play on the name despite the fact that everything else on the menu was straightforward seasonal cooking. Well, we got what I ordered. Broccoli with Cheetos crumbled over the top. Granted, it was perfectly cooked and seasoned broccoli and tasty but I was still a bit let down. It didn't stop me from eating it though.
As for the rest of the meal, I started with the hamachi was apples and jalapenos, a perfectly clean, crisp dish that fit the current seasonal theme like a dry, cool breeze (I have warned you all I'm a terrible food porn writer....). The Mrs. ordered the Iberian ham and grilled cheese which was a perfect warm blanket after the breeze of the fish (getting worse here, DC....) The soon-to-be-in-Thailand nephew got the salad with the duck confit that I pronounced to have "wonderful quacky goodness" (there, better to attempt humor than to be all food-crit-like). My medium rare venison chops with pomegranate and pumpkin seeds were some of the best Bambi I've ever had, the yielding, gently gamey deer perfectly contrasted with the sweet and spicy crunching, popping seeds. Others got the "Wellington" which was actually a beautifully grilled filet mignon (and I don't usually like filet mignon) with a mushroom puff pastry that was absolutely fantastic. I shouldn't even try this next sentence, but what the hell: The mushrooms gave one visions of a forest in October after a light rain.
Ouch, that's really awful.
The meal however, was fantastic. I only wish I could have seen it more clearly.
Then again, it could be worse. This trend appears to be gaining momentum. Seems to be a gimmick to me but I haven't had the experience. Don't think I'm interested in having it either since the way food looks is part of the complete dining experience to me. Fortunately for everyone reading this, I don't attempt to describe presentation. Doubtless that would result in prose even clunkier than my attempts to convert flavors into words. Keep that up and I'll have to dim the brightness or reduce the size of the font on this so it's hard to discern what I've written and readers can take guesses at what I might have said.
Maybe the proprietors of those dimly lit spaces are onto something.
Last night we were at Park Avenue Autumn for, as I mentioned yesterday, the second send-off dinner for a Thailand-bound nephew. I arrived last even though I was 10 minutes early; for whatever reason traffic was non-existent and the drive from central S.I. to 63rd and Park only took 40 minutes so everyone was waiting for me to order. I checked my ever-present black Jansport knapsack, sat down and tried to read the menu.
I say "tried" because the menu was printed in 10 point font and the room was exceedingly dark. Granted, I have had cataract surgery on my left eye and still have the damn things in my right but I wasn't the only one in the room picking up one of the candles off the table to read the offerings. It's a good thing I had read the menu online so I had a fair idea of what I wanted anyway but still, ladies and gentlemen of the restaurant world, please, turn up the lights a little bit.
A couple of weeks ago while on business in L.A. one of my dinners was scheduled to be at a strip-club-sounding Mexican place called the Pink Taco. It was loud. It was dark. Black everywhere. The menus, rather ingeniously, were black with pink font. Teeny, tiny pink font. It was fairly amusing to watch several members of our large dinner party holding up cell phones or Blackberry screens to try to illuminate the pages of the menu. I gave up, asked someone what was good there and just ordered that. Chicken tacos I think. It was mediocre but the place was packed and the locals raved about what good food they had there. Then I remembered that nobody actually eats much of anything in Southern California but they sure do like loud, dark restaurants with expensive frou-frou cocktails (this place unsurprisingly specialized in things like margaritas with Grand Marnier in them) where you can see other pretty, pretty people. Or try to anyway, since it's so damn dark it's hard to discern the truly pretty from the impostors.
Fortunately for our party last night we had more food that was truly pretty and only one thing that was an impostor. At the bottom of PAA's menu they have a section called "for the table" and one of the items listed is called "Broccoli and Cheetos". Fresh of Sunday's wd-50 experience I excitedly demanded that we order the dish figuring it would be some clever mol-gas play on the name despite the fact that everything else on the menu was straightforward seasonal cooking. Well, we got what I ordered. Broccoli with Cheetos crumbled over the top. Granted, it was perfectly cooked and seasoned broccoli and tasty but I was still a bit let down. It didn't stop me from eating it though.
As for the rest of the meal, I started with the hamachi was apples and jalapenos, a perfectly clean, crisp dish that fit the current seasonal theme like a dry, cool breeze (I have warned you all I'm a terrible food porn writer....). The Mrs. ordered the Iberian ham and grilled cheese which was a perfect warm blanket after the breeze of the fish (getting worse here, DC....) The soon-to-be-in-Thailand nephew got the salad with the duck confit that I pronounced to have "wonderful quacky goodness" (there, better to attempt humor than to be all food-crit-like). My medium rare venison chops with pomegranate and pumpkin seeds were some of the best Bambi I've ever had, the yielding, gently gamey deer perfectly contrasted with the sweet and spicy crunching, popping seeds. Others got the "Wellington" which was actually a beautifully grilled filet mignon (and I don't usually like filet mignon) with a mushroom puff pastry that was absolutely fantastic. I shouldn't even try this next sentence, but what the hell: The mushrooms gave one visions of a forest in October after a light rain.
Ouch, that's really awful.
The meal however, was fantastic. I only wish I could have seen it more clearly.
Then again, it could be worse. This trend appears to be gaining momentum. Seems to be a gimmick to me but I haven't had the experience. Don't think I'm interested in having it either since the way food looks is part of the complete dining experience to me. Fortunately for everyone reading this, I don't attempt to describe presentation. Doubtless that would result in prose even clunkier than my attempts to convert flavors into words. Keep that up and I'll have to dim the brightness or reduce the size of the font on this so it's hard to discern what I've written and readers can take guesses at what I might have said.
Maybe the proprietors of those dimly lit spaces are onto something.
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