patricia and i stopped at awakenings first for some coffee since we were both about to pass out. awakenings has recently redone their baked goods section and have a glass case full of delicious looking treats from frieda's, which i think is a local caterer or baker or something. the treats look awesome... adorable little tarts and cakes in pretty colors and exciting flavors.
patricia wanted a little chocolate cake but there was only one left and she didn't want to ruin her dinner, so they actually reserved it for her. i am not kidding. the dude put a little "reserved" sign next to it! i love awakenings.
on to dinner... basically don't go to red is what i have to say. first of all, the interior annoys me. i know this is stupid but i just got annoyed by all the red. plus it felt like we were in a cave. it was a beautiful night and i was stuck in a dark red hole.
on to my next bitch. the service sucked. this is probably what really caused me the most annoyance. our waiter was david and basically david's goal in life seemed to be to perfect the art of being both pushy and inaccessible. he started off by asking if, for our "water order," we wanted pellegrino or panna or some shit. he went on for a while until i was like "we just want tap." he's like "oh." i think it was then that he realized we were the jeans/tshirt/flip flop crowd. (the rest of the people in the place were weird ass "i am so rich and pretentious but i look like hell and i'm trying to pretend i'm 10 years younger than i actually am" types.) still, it's not that we were being cheap. we just wanted tap water and anyway a "water order" is a tacky ploy to try to get a bigger tip.
well then patricia, brian, and i ordered drinks. gary said he just wanted water. then david started to kind of bully him, in a "nice" way. "are you sure? come on. you know you want something else." dude. he wants water. leave him alone.
david then left and a few minutes later another guy, who i can only guess was a water boy, asked us for our "water preference." please note the strange focus on water, this is going to be important later.
well then we began to peruse the menu. red is expensive. i know this is dumb but i always get annoyed when i go to expensive restaurants in cincinnati because in my experience thus far, it's just never that good that it's worth it. i am sorry, i know i sound obnoxious, but the best places i've been to here are in the $10-20 for an entree range. so when i find out that you are serving a $40 steak a la carte, i just feel annoyed. there is no reason for that kind of prices in this city.
the drinks were blah. brian really liked his dirty martini and said they have great martinis in general there (he had been before for drinks). patricia and i were disappointed with the raspberry mojitos, which as patricia said tasted like raspberry sodas. yes, there were fresh raspberries. however, there was like one mint sprig and a lime wedge. NOT a good mojito, and that was really annoying since it was $9.
on to the food. patricia and i shared the portuguese cioppino. we got appetizers: patricia had oysters and i had diver scallops. brian ordered the steak and crabcake, and gary went all out and ordered the $67 "steak red," which was described on the menu as:
"7-ounce, center-cut filet mignon with a half-pound of cold water,
butter poached lobster tail, asparagus and mushroom risotto..."
ok. so i saw this on the menu and i stopped reading after the first line. i was like "a half pound of cold water??? what the fuck???" after all the water obsession i just thought like maybe there was some crazy hyde park pseudo elite thing with water or something. well then they all started laughing their asses off at me and brian explained that the cold water meant "cold water lobster." oh. i am an idiot but this provided us with much entertainment for the rest of the night.
the food came and it was pretty good. my scallops were nice and rare (ie- not overcooked), but i was a little disappointed that they were not pan seared, and i kind of think it's just a waste to serve diver scallops that aren't pan seared. they came with some weird mayonnaise covered watercress and some bland mango slices, and the plate had some kind of oil drizzled on it.
the portuguese cioppino was just ok. the seafood in it was very fresh and delicious (shrimp and mussels) except for the squid, which was tough and overcooked. there was sausage in it which added flavor to the otherwise very bland broth (pretty much just chicken broth and tomatoes). this was extra disappointing to me because a few months ago i had the best cioppino of my life at rj snapper's in columbus and i think my hopes were too high. but still, cioppino is supposed to be spicy and zesty and this was neither.
also, when our food first came david brought us chicken instead of cioppino and when i complained he was like "what? i thought you said chicken melango" when i KNOW he heard me because when i ordered the cioppino he was all like "what? you want the CHEE-oppino?" and i got annoyed that he mispronounced it and then acted like i was the one who mispronounced it. dumbass.
gary's "steak red" was very delicious and the lobster tail that he got was excellent. i am not a huge lobster person, i usually prefer crab, but this lobster tail was sweet and tender and delicious. the best i've ever had for sure. brian's food looked good but i didn't taste it since i was starting to get a stomach ache. he liked it though.
oh yeah, before our meal david brought us some little puff pastry with truffle something or other. it seemed very nice until he informed us "the chef does this for everyone." way to make a girl feel special. asshole.
at one point in the meal, brian said, "i think i hate our waiter." gary was like "i thought he was ok at first but now i hate him more and more as the minutes tick by." the thing is, the rest of the servers/water boys/bread boys/whatever the fuck were very nice and friendly. i think david was just a jerk. plus he kept calling brian "my buddy" and "my man." what the fuck?
after we finished our meal, we waited a while and then david threw dessert menus at us and disappeared for like a half an hour (i am not exaggerating). i was really getting annoyed by this point because i had a bad stomach ache, i think from all the rich food, and i was really tired. finally he came back, harassed us over our decision not to order dessert, and disappeared for another 15 minutes, when he came back with the bill, which he fucked up by putting the chicken melango on instead of the cioppino. then it took him another 15 minutes to fix it.
at this point i just had had enough and i was totally pissy. it was not entirely red's fault, i was tired and i felt like crap and i had gotten a phone call earlier in the day that had kind of dampened my mood. but david sucked and the place was full of stick up the ass jerks (example: in the bathroom this girl stared at my flip flops and gave me the evil eye) and everything was overpriced.
basically it was like cumin all over again: way inflated prices, bland and disappointing food, and overall way too much pretentious bullshit. i know i'm going to sound totally obnoxious here but i feel like cincinnati just doesn't get upscale dining. i mean, i am more than willing to occasionally throw down $100+ for a really awesome dining experience. however, too many restaurants here seem to think that they keys to such an experience are snobbery, truffle oil, and butter. unfortunately it seems that their diners agree. bleah. i'm not going back.
1 comment:
I love you and I love this story! Hilarious! If it makes you feel any better, I thought the same thing when I read the "cold water" bit as well....cold water??? WTF?
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