This place is incredibly easy to miss. It's a tiny little restaurant that almost looks like a part of a house. It isn't very well lit. Upon entering, you have to go through what looks like curtains. I can definitely say it didn't look anything the way I was expecting. The tables are wooden and simplistic. The decor is very much east meets west. There are about 30 seats in the entire restaurant, and only 2 servers. Service was friendly, although it could be a tad slow. It seems as though some of their menu items get changed periodically, as there are foods I saw in pictures on Yelp that they no longer have on their menu, and new ones that have not been added to their online menu.
One awkward thing about their place settings is that if you intend on sharing food, the dishes on which to do so are the dishes that they place your cutlery on. They're these long oval dishes that are usually for serving appetizers (like our shrimp). They're incredibly awkward to eat on because it's so easy for food to fall off of them.
Had:
Sea-wings ($12) - 6 mussels and 3 flower octopuses with some kind of breading and some hot sauce, topped with thinly sliced red onions and a sprinkling of herbs. For the portion, the price was not bad. The mussels were a pretty good size, and I can't complain about the way they were cooked. The octopuses were tender, but still needed to be chewed for quite some time. This dish was a tad salty. For those who are into buffalo wings, this will probably be your kind of sauce. I'm not a buffalo wing person, so this was not my kind of sauce.
Coconut shrimp ($12) - 6 decent-sized shrimp. We expected these to be deep fried. They were not. The coconut sauce was light, but very flavorful. My favorite dish of the night.
Pulled pork frites ($8) - decent portion for the price. Fries could have been crispier. Pulled pork was quite tasty. Presentation was interesting. Sometimes, Asian restaurants will put rice in a bowl, then flip the bowl onto the plate to give the rice a bowl shape. They did this with our fries. It looked like a bowl when it came to the table. When you squish fries, sad things happen. I quite enjoyed the large mound of fried taro shavings they placed atop my fries. Actually, I enjoyed the taro shavings more than the fries themselves.
Chicken and Waffle ($16) - this is the dinner portion. When I have chicken and waffles, I'm expecting really crispy fried chicken. At Inspire, I got really tender chicken that wasn't breaded very well. There were large sections of my chicken that had no breading. The menu description says that it's "crisp chicken". My chicken was not crisp. I could not find the cinnamon whipped butter (but for all I know, it could have melted). The spicy berry compote had star anise in it, and thinking they were berries, I actually bit into one. I couldn't taste much anything for a while after that. My suggestion would be for them to strain out the star anise before adding the berries, if they want to get the flavor of the anise but not kill their customers' taste buds. The maple in the ginger maple sauce was definitely there, but it could have done with a tad more ginger, if they were going to call it that, because I had to search really hard for those ginger notes.
The dbl bacon cheesecake burger ($20) - comes with fries. I believe it was peameal bacon (and I'm not sure what was double about it). This was supposed to have matcha cheesecake in it. I mean, we got this for the novelty of the cheesecake. What we received was a really delicious burger (served medium and super juicy), but the matcha cheesecake was a letdown. I was expecting a good sized portion of cheesecake in my burger, and not just some tiny cheesecake crumbles. It looked like burnt avocado crumble. If you didn't know it was there, you'd probably not realize what you ate. I had some of the cheesecake by itself, and it definitely tasted like cheesecake. My brother's girlfriend said she could definitely taste the matcha. I could not. I would definitely get their burger again, but not for the cheesecake.
Udon carbonara ($18) - got this one because Yelp said this is the one to get. It was pretty good. Very creamy sauce. Loved the mushrooms. Lots of Italian sausage. I got maybe one piece of braised beef (and I didn't know it was braised). The portion was okay. I'm guessing the fusion aspects of this were the udon and the honey mushrooms. The honey mushrooms were a delightful addition to this dish, but I think actual pasta would have worked better than udon here.
Shiitake New York ($32) - I have no idea why this costed so much. I can get steaks at steakhouses for cheaper. The menu says deconstructed. They deconstructed the steak by slicing it. Pft. Bacon corn replaced by baby bok choy without informing us. Sweet potatoes were good. Wellness of the steak done properly. Wouldn't get this again.
I enjoyed my dinner, but I'm not quite a fan. Price to value ratio wasn't good enough. I feel a tad let down. read more