New restaurants salivating over the prospect of a few thousand captive office workers robotically herding into the dearth of local lunch choices and opening their fatted wallets on a daily basis are becoming as omnipresent in Century City as the double digit price tags for the relatively microscopic sandwiches being served in these swindlers' palaces.
But Cuvee was going to be different. When the price of a sandwich is north of $10, it just can't possibly be bad, or small, or flavorless. The menu looks good, and creative, and no one would have the gall to charge a ridiculous amount of money for just a sandwich if they can't back it up with quality and quantity.
Ah, but if you've ever seen those Leptoprin ads ("When is a diet pill worth $153?") or the ad for the 4-minute-a-day exercise thingamajig known as the "ROM time machine" (which looks like a Rube Goldberg contraption that suffered a fall down six flights of stairs--oh, and retail price: $14,615), you know all too well the power of setting a price so insanely high that people feel absolutely compelled to buy your snake oil.
That said, Cuvee opened today, and I figured, well, I should at least give it a shot.
The food is mediocre. The prosciutto/mozzarella/tomato sandwich is shockingly flavorless, which, considering the ingredients, it most certainly should not be. Plus, for the price, it was very small, on a tiny little baguette, served with a small pasta salad (which, in fairness, was decent). All in all, considering the price and the quality, I'd give it two stars.
Deduct a half star for the excessive plastic packaging. At the rate of new, overpriced, and perpetually crowded sandwich shacks popping up around Century Park, the twin towers will be awash in plastic mountains inside of 10 years.
They offer free delivery in the area for a $10 minimum order, which is nice. What is not nice is that they forgot to include my co-worker's chips that are supposed to, but did not, come with the order.
So I called down there (it's just right downstairs) and advised them of the omission, fully expecting that they would kindly offer to run the bag of chips back to our office, at which point, I likely would've said, no, very nice of you, but that's ok, if you could give me some sort of refund or something, that would be great.
But no, they did not offer it. They said "how about if we give you 'store credit'?" Store credit for a bag of chips? What, like a gift card with a buck on it or something? This annoyed me, so I held firm. "No, actually that won't be ok. I'd like you to send the chips over, please." They said they would.
It's been more than three hours now. No chips. Obviously, I'm not getting them. Obviously, I was never going to get them. Thanks, Cuvee. You've set a new record for the quickest pissing off of a new (and now former) customer. Enjoy those chips! read more