Living in this general neighborhood, I've eaten here a number of times, lunch and dinner. I must say I've never had a bad meal here. The service is always unostentatious and good, and the food really decent.
Our most recent meal was on Valentine's Day. Interesting situation at the reception. My wife and I arrived just after a couple ahead of us. They asked if we had a reservation (we did) and seated us first. But when they seated the two ahead of us, they got a booth - clearly a better table. The only way I could rationalize was that the booth was set up for four, and taking us there would make it look like they were unprepared for us. But they could easily get around that by taking us to the booth, saying they had the OTHER table ready, but that they were giving us the better table. Yeah - trust me to be anal about something as "mundane" as seating in a dining room.
They had a special menu which was really good value: 4-course featuring filet and lobster tail for $45. Filet was kind of skinny (4 oz. maybe) but the lobster looked decent. In any case, we opted to order a la carte, since my wife had her eye on the wild scallops. I can't tell you what I had (grouper, I think), but her scallops, punctuated with out-of-this-world lardons, was outstanding. I didn't even begrudge the value of 6 no- very-large scallps. That was worth the price of admission. We wanted the special feature creme brulee cheese cake for dessert, but waitress Anjelica brought a regular CB instead. Not very good - tasted like it was made with artificial "cream" rather than the real thing. I'm giving it 4 stars not because it's the best restaurant I've ever been to, but to pump up the volume. Give them a try. Sure beats Applebee's next door!
p.s. KNOW THY WINES when you come here, or to any place for that matter. I've noticed that mark-ups are far from uniform. We contemplated either the Rosenblum viognier or the Buehler Chardonnay, both of which were only $30 (the viognier I've seen at retail outlets for close to $20, but at least $15, and the Buehler just a bit less), but then they had the Meridian pinot noir at $32, when I've bought it for $7 just recently (regular retail may be around 9 or 10 max). In general, wine mark-ups at restaurant of 3x and up are outrageous. read more