A Zero Star Empire

My husband asked me not to write this. Our conversation started civil before devolving into a gritty symphony of divergence. He believes the review won’t make sense, is personal, and petty. My soul disagrees. To cleanse my conscious, I must forewarn anyone else who dines here.

Believe it or not, I normally give positive reviews. When I finish a book, I leave a review. When I go to the dentist, I leave a review. When a product does what is supposed to, I leave a review. When an app asks me for a review, I hit ask me again later. I’m not a saint, and shouldn’t have to leave a new review for each update. I want to give this place a single star, because the chef cooked with love and passion. However, the food was not edible and the atmosphere was oppressive.

On arrival, the smell of burning asphalt will assault your nose. The parking lot is not being refinished. No one has paved the road since Clinton was in office. No, in fact, you would expect the pleasant, crisp smell of fall losing its battle to winter to greet you. Unfortunately, the smells coming from within overwhelmed that delicate tone.

The beauty of the dining room is overshadowed by the aural assault of a Chuck E Cheese meets sports bar that is supposed to be fine dining. It’s oppressively loud, enveloping you with incoherent noise coming from no less than five t.v’s forced into this small place. This wouldn’t be so egregious if everyone from the chef to the other guests weren’t trying to carry on a conversation with you. Everyone is a little too friendly here, turning light conversation you can’t hear into an offendable interrogation. Intrusive is the word, but bearable is more accurate, because like the chef at least everyone cares.  

Oh, did you catch that? Yes, it’s an open kitchen allowing the chef to talk to you while they craft the perfect hockey puck with what is supposed to be your dinner. Along with the air’s general taste of burnt rubber, you can enjoy the clanks of pots, the smack of slamming oven doors, and the general chaos caused from a kitchen trying to cook, converse, and watch football simultaneously. 

The kitchen is clean. I will be honest. The whole place is spotless. This place perfectly exemplifies why looks can be deceiving. Why you can’t judge a book by its cover. I’ve had five star meals come from a grease coated trailer. If decor matched the incoming meal, the walls would be brown and water damaged, the china chipped, and the floors tacky. Instead, the china is fine, the linens silky (the only thing that will be) and the hardwoods polished and smooth. The wallpaper and backsplash are the same shade of pristine clean bleach white. There isn’t a speck of dust, cobweb, or even that thick encroaching heat coming from the kitchen. The smothering thickness is that lead weight in your chest, augmented by the emergency siren of sounds and aromas. 

If you survive the wait, excruciating conversations, and your instincts telling you to leave, a long-awaited extraordinary meal awaits that will make you question how the chef did that. Before exploring our meal, the coup de grâce, you should know your reservation is a suggestion. Food takes at least an hour or two to become that perfectly inedible form that hits your table. Rubbery, chewy, crunchy teeth chipping food that somehow dissolves into a powdery mist after its attack takes time to create. They can only achieve contradictory culinary concoctions with time, patience, and a chef who has angered the devil himself.

You can’t order your way out of this trap. The menu is prefixed and served family style at beautiful oversized tables. Forcing you to share your misery with the other diners and if you are unlucky the chef themself.

We chose from a roast bird and ham as our proteins. Indistinguishable from one another, they land on the table as two slick mounds of meat. Carving knives slide off them and the cleaver bounces. After five minutes of work and a few prayers, lumps of servable meat are still indistinguishable from one another. Pink interiors mean one is undercooked and the other is raw. How do you create a thick slick armor on raw meat? No one knows. In the end, my choice turned on the taste burnt honey, identifying it as something I hope was ham. Don’t tell the Egyptians, but anything can go bad in the right hands. 

Deceitful bread that feels soft and supple morphs into crunchy croutons as you butter them. They cooked the potatoes for such a long time that they transformed from raw to supple to stone-like. Veggies…Well; the salad was fine, but bag to bowl is hard to befoul. 

Dinner conversation degrades as inebriation takes hold. Fine wine and cocktails loosening tongues, t.v. shows and games becoming louder to be heard over the ever rising rumble at the table. Has silence ever enveloped you because the world around you is too loud? No? Me either. That’s just movie stuff where your world freezes and sound drops away in a moment of clarity. If that happens here, you have permanent hearing damage. Consider yourself lucky.

I could go on, but if you have come this far either you thought this novel review was funny, or nothing I can say will dissuade you from dining here. After dinner coffee and deserts are store bought and pleasant, but you don’t come to a place like this for that. The name on the door speaks to owners known for their culinary ambition, pedigree, and Michelin stars. Don’t let the name of an often challenged but never beaten fine dining empire fool you. If your stomach isn’t revolting, you will stop for fast food. 

Mom and dad, I love you, but next year we’re going to Jeremy’s for Thanksgiving. Just because you own a fine dining empire doesn’t mean you can cook.