Adrift is a very popular restaurant! We walked in without a reservation for a 5:30 dinner before our ferry ride out to the San Juan Islands. At that point, there were already no tables left and instead only a couple of counter seats - which is actually our preference! The seats are situated right in front of the kitchen, so we were able to watch as the chefs performed their magic.
We ordered two apps (one as an entrée) and one entrée. The first app took about 10 minutes to come out. The other two dishes took an additional 35 minutes to come out (so 45 minutes total) - small kitchen, limited throughout, and being super busy = slow food service, I suppose. Otherwise, the rest of the service is fantastic - the bottleneck certainly isn't the waitstaff!
Oven Fries ($7.50) - The are cooked in a huge pile in the oven. Unfortunately, they aren't that great. They're very uniform in texture, including the crust, giving off a very leathery type of chew, like a desiccated husk of a potato. No fluff, no crisp crust, just dry and dehydrated. It's served with a garlic aioli that's not particularly garlicky, but at least adds some fat and creaminess to the fries. The fries are salted well and are tossed with some dried herbs, including parsley and rosemary. (3/5)
Crab Cakes, Three ($32) - It looks like they shallow fry these for a bit and then toss in the oven to finish. They baked our serving until they almost looked burnt on the sides, in stark contrast to the next batch of crab cakes that looked golden brown. Yet, they didn't taste burnt at all, which is great. Good crust, plenty of crab meat mixed with a bit of binder and green onion. It's mostly thinly shredded crab meat rather than larger chunks as a more premium crab cake. The texture is a bit on the firmer and drier side, although there's plenty of sauce both on top and bottom. On top is a green guacamole sauce that almost makes the top of the crab cakes taste like fried tortilla. On the bottom is a generous amount of Thai chili sauce, very sweet, tangy and a little bit spicy. I wish the chili sauce wasn't there though - the taste is a bit overpowering to me, making it almost impossible to appreciate the crab. Instead, the only crab-forward bites are those in the center of the cake. I don't usually comment on the plating of the food, but this dish left a lot to be desired, since the sauce is slopped on and below the star of the show - the crab cakes. Let the crab cakes stand on their own with the sauces on the side, or at least not doused in the sauces! (4/5)
Sauce Bercy Special, Salmon ($34) - The dish starts with a mound of risotto on the bottom. It's puzzlingly served cold with the rice being undercooked, exhibiting a hard, almost small crunch in the center of each grain of rice. The temperature is very disjointed with the rest of the dish, because the brocollini (cooked well) and the salmon are served steaming hot. The sauce on top is savory and a bit lemony and the salmon is cooked well enough, only slightly overcooked, being not too dry with a good flaky texture. The sauce is not warmed and instead ladled on top of the salmon from a metal container. (3/5)
I have some mixed feelings about Adrift. I feel like for the price point, the food should be a lot better executed than it actually is. I saw the chefs working hard, so I feel like this might be a management problem. Perhaps they are allowing too many guests into the restaurant at once and/or have too large of a menu, requiring too much time per dish in the extremely small kitchen. It's a shame, because the experience could be a lot better with better throughput management.
Bathrooms - Two unisex rooms.