Chambers is a charming, intimate restaurant with a warm, compact dining room, an ample bar area,…read moreand even two chef's-kitchen bar seats that give the room a little extra theater. Unfortunately, the food never really lived up to the setting.
The meal started with the scallops with sweet corn and espelette. They were fine, which ended up being one of the more positive assessments of the night. My father had the Peekytoe crab with peach and brioche, which was also okay. My mother had the Norwich Meadows carrots with yogurt and carrot-top pesto, and that was where the meal started feeling flat. Nothing was technically offensive, but there was very little excitement or depth to the plate.
Portions were consistently small, which became harder to ignore as the meal went on.
For mains, my father ordered the heritage pork sausage with shrimp, Jimmy Nardello peppers and cilantro. The dish only really came together when you got the sausage and pepper in the same bite, but there was very little of it, and on its own the sausage was not especially compelling.
I ordered the Snowdance chicken with spinach, sherry and thyme, which is apparently one of the restaurant's signature dishes. My father and I switched halfway through because he liked the chicken more than I did. I found it surprisingly weak: essentially a pounded chicken preparation that was bland, average and nowhere near what I would expect from a signature entrée at this price.
My mother had the housemade bucatini with zucchini, Tarentaise and mint. It was strange rather than satisfying, and none of us particularly liked it.
Service was much better than the food. Our server was good, and the secondary service was even better. They did forget one of my father's drinks, but replaced it without issue. I still left 22% because the kitchen's problems were not the server's fault.
Dessert finally produced the best dish of the night: the mascarpone with phyllo, cinnamon caramel and lemon pistachios. That was genuinely good.
I then figured I would order the cheese because, at minimum, how badly can you mess up cheese? The answer was not badly, exactly, but absurdly. The "cheese and crackers" course was two small pieces of Appalachian cheese for the table. Two pieces. For three people.
That pretty much captured the meal.
The restaurant has obvious Gramercy Tavern DNA in its restraint, seasonal ingredients and minimalist plating, but this felt like a much less successful version of that philosophy. When this style works, simplicity feels precise and confident. Here, too often, it just felt sparse, underdeveloped and expensive.
For three people, with appetizers, entrées, three cocktails, one glass of wine, dessert, cheese and tip, the total came to roughly $472.
At that price, "fine" is not enough.