I know everyone loves this place, but for us, it was SO subpar. We went for a birthday dinner, and we were frankly extremely disappointed. Maybe we just ordered the wrong items and the other items are better? Maybe we just went on an off day? I have no idea how we had such a terrible experience here.
This is a tiny single house that has been turned into a restaurant located off of Leake Ave. (honestly, not a prime location). Because of the nature of the building, there are not a lot of spaces for tables, and reservations are needed. You should note, if you are a couple, there is a high chance you will be seated at a small table in a dingy narrow hallway where the wait staff will always walk by you to get to the kitchen, the patrons will walk by you to get to a coat rack and/or bathroom. Some people even bumped our table.
Okay, here's a breakdown of the dishes we tried:
*Bread with butter ($3.50) - It was warm, but it wasn't soft or tasty. It was such mediocre bread. Save your money, it's not even worth the $3.50 that they charge you. If they make it in-house, they need a new recipe.
*BBQ Shrimp ($19) - This was the only fantastic item we had. We should have ordered two of these and then called it a day. This was delicious. Flavorful and perfectly cooked. It's an appetizer, so the portion is small (6 shrimp) though.
*Eggplant Parmesan ($28) - This was not great, but the redeeming quality was the sauce. The tomato sauce was excellent with a perfect flavor. Not too acidic, not too sweet, well seasoned. However, the breading was so bad on the eggplant. It was flavorless and already soggy when we received it. The pasta was overcooked and of bad quality (like cheap box noodles from a grocery store). Pasta is so easy to make... For the price, I would have expected fresh pasta served al dente. This item doesn't even have a protein, so why is it almost $30 for cheap grocery store noodles?
*Seafood platter ($48) - This was overall awful. The redfish with the shrimp pesto butter were actually good, but the redfish was SO tiny (about half the size of my palm) and it came with 3 shrimp. Everything else the "platter" came with was terrible. The cornbread was so dry you needed water to wash down every single bite. The fried calamari was soggy with no seasoning to the breading. The oyster items were the worst oysters I have ever had in my life. I did not know oysters could be cooked so badly. The creamed spinach and oysters were so bland. It's like they just sauteed both in the same pan with no seasonings. The artichoke baked oysters were no better. It was just sour. Like, they mixed some canned artichokes with oysters along with some flour product and shoved it in an oven. I am not kidding when I write that I have never had such horrendous oyster dishes. Whatever you do, do not order their seafood platter. The majority of it is awful.
It's considered fine dining, so you can expect the portions to be small, but when the food doesn't even taste good on top of that, you leave feeling like you should go grab something else to eat on the way home.
One thing that really bothered me was the lack of diversity for the staff at the front of the house. We live in such a diverse city and for there to be zero diversity for the customer-facing staff, that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was a rare coincidence and they usually have other staff working front of the house too? I certainly hope so.
All in all, take my advice, if you were planning on going to a restaurant in the same price range, go to Mr. B's Bistro instead. You'll get better food, better atmosphere, and you'll spend around the same amount. I felt I completely wasted my money dining here and regretted not just going somewhere else. I heard this place hasn't been the same since Covid, and I could see how that might be the case because I do not know how the prestige nor reputation could be justified. read more