It was a drab Mother's Day disappointment. You get a special view of NYC in a piece of prime real estate. You can see the Freedom Tower and the Statue of Liberty - a major plus there. I understand why wedding services are hosted here. Also, our waiter was kind and helpful. Leaving all that aside, the experience was an overt rip-off.
$80 per person for a 3-course pre-fix menu, containing 17 options, 3 of which were dessert items. This is already a pretty steep price to charge, so my family was expecting something very special in addition to the pristine view of NYC. Having such a limited number of items should have, in theory, implied strong focus on quality. We didn't see the price justified in the slightest.
3 of the 5 people in my table ordered the caesar salad as an appetizer since the grilled octopus was out...at 4:30 pm for an establishment that closes at 9 pm. That was disappointing. However, the caesar salad was great, and we were served a heaping pile of it. I was a big fan of the dressing. The croutons, meanwhile, were stale and unwanted. Some of the leaves were also far too big, which made for some comically large bites. The tuna tartare was the only other appetizer we ordered, which underwhelmed the remaining two diners. The tuna wasn't cut properly, so it ended up being a stringy mess; and there was something off flavor-wise, like it was missing sesame oil and/or seasoning. As an aside, for an $80 pre-fix menu, we were expecting bread or focaccia, which most places provide. This was too much to ask for, apparently, as we got none. Overall a mixed start to our dinner
Entrées were the same: hit or miss. My crispy skin salmon was tasty except for one thing: the skin was a soggy, limp, and unappetizing slab on cooked fish flesh. The cook on the salmon was fantastic and the flavor combination worked great; but marketing crispy skin salmon and serving salmon skin that is the complete opposite was a surprise for a place charging $80 per person on a holiday. It was as if the skin was taken off the salmon before cooking, left it out at room temperature, cooked the fish, slapped the room temperature skin on top of the salmon, and served the dish. I don't know what was done that made believe the skin was crispy, as there was a blatant gap in quality control. I also noticed a solid tablespoon of runoff oil on the side of my bowl that was probably the salsa verde, which I didn't taste. So my dish was essentially great salmon, tasty fregola and eggplant caponata, a collection of wilted green herbs on top, and everything covered in vegetable oil from a broken sauce, with some skin piled on the side of my plate. Overall was expecting better.
The chicken milanese was either great or borderline inedible. One order was crispy and pleasant, and the other chicken was rife with tendons and inedible pieces that rendered half of his order a total waste. We considered returning it for a replacement, but we were already 1.5 hours into dinner service such that we wanted to leave and didn't want to wait any longer for our meals. This leads to another issue: it took incredibly long for food to come out. There was around a 45-60 minute lag from when we finished our appetizers to when we received our entrées, and then nearly the same lag from entrées to desserts. Our dinner was approximately 2.5 hours. The fillet mignon entrée was good, minus the crab, which was essentially mushed on top; and minus the asparagus, which was mushy. The short rib was "good, but not great," per my acquaintance. Overall, disappointed with the entrées. That left the dessert to end on a good note.
Instead, we left Felina absolutely outraged.
The chocolate mousse ordered by myself and two others was a pathetic, syrupy, dense, and warm brown cement that occupied one-fifth of my plate. If that wasn't incredible enough, 30% of the plate was taken up by cocaine lines of raw cocoa powder, another line of Oreo crumbs that was insignificant to any part of the dish, and a tiny pile of whipped cream with 2 blackberries. The other half of the plate was empty. As a health concern, all three of us who ordered the mousse went home with stomach problems, probably due to the brown Elmer's glue of a dessert.
This wasn't the worst of it. The lemon crème cake was an indiscriminate archipelago of coulis drops, a dollop of whipped cream, and two bite-sized pieces of cake. I found myself cracking up over the WORST desert I have ever seen. And note, assuming an even pricing distribution, this dessert EXCLUDING TIP is $26.67! What a vile and inexplicable disgrace of a dessert that occupied 15% of a plate.
Don't expect me entertaining the money-grab that is a pre-fix menu at any establishment ever again, let alone at Felina. My father's suggestion of making pizza instead of incinerating $550 in disbelief sounds way better in retrospect. Catastrophic! I want a refund for this waste of time and money on a holiday evening. read more