I’ll admit – a hotel restaurant is never going to be my happy place. They always feel artificial – stylized and work-shopped within an inch of their dull, plastic lives. Devoid the attention to detail that marks true quality, they substitute a patina of “hip” and, in a turn of honesty, “swank” in order to fool the masses into thinking they’re enjoying an “upscale” restaurant, rather than them having acknowledge that they’re getting hammered and hoping to pick up a tipsy sales rep in a tarted up Olive Garden.
Yeah, I used to travel for work. What?
And so, I found my self parked in a booth trying to figure out what I was going to cram in my face before we went for my yearly dose of culture. And it was genuinely a difficult decision; exactly nothing on the menu is interesting. It’s the “Best of Paul McCartney and Wings” collection of safe, hipster food. Nothing is going to challenge or entice – like a truck-stop gloryhole, you’re going to satiate a biological need. Nothing more.
Starters were some ridiculously overpriced cheese (seriously, $9 is a fuckin’ stretch for maybe an ounce of rotten animal lactation. This particular goat tried it’s best, but the blueberry sauce ran it over completely) and the baby gem salad with light dressing – which apparently directs some poor, beaten kitchen drudge to trowel the inside of the bowl with it. You could grout a kitchen with that shit. There was also tortellini, which was remarkable only in it’s resemblance to strip mall wonton soup – super thick pasta, very little filling, floating in broth.
Mains:
The duck which, despite the well coiffed warning about pinkness from my server, turned up well done. Sides were unremarkable – diced vegetable medley in a pan sauce.
Chicken – I’ll cop to it – I didn’t try this one. My dining companion said it was good. It looked like chicken. He ate all of it.
Mussels – These were a highlight of the meal. Big, briny, and sweet. Complemented well with the leeks and some really good bread, which they hid during the cheese fiasco. Seriously, you’ve got some profit margin to up your bread game there.
Sides:
The best part of the meal was the corn parfait. Straight up. Good sweet corn, a little heat, and only mild embarrassment of having to eat it out of a tumbler. If you’re eating here, definitely get the corn.
Charred beets – what it says on the tin.
I was starting to rethink the snark of this review round about the chicken paragraph, but fuck them – they’ve obviously thrown a ton of money at this mediocre monstrosity. It’s fine to be all “we’re going to be hip and industrial” but at least WALL OFF THE FUCKING AIR CONDITIONER SO PEOPLE CAN HEAR EACH OTHER HOW ELSE WILL I GET LAID I”M NOT THAT PRETTY.
It’s food.
http://www.swankandswine.com/dinner/