Updating a five-star review I left in 2023 after a recent visit. I went back and forth about…read moreupdating this review and finally decided to. My husband and I have been eating here since at least 2021 and have raved to all of our friends and family about how fantastic the cocktails and the food are here. We always bring family here for a nice dinner night when they visit from out of town, and it has been consistent since 2021 until Thursday, August 27th.
We always order the same drinks, as they are our favorite. I enjoy the Limoncello Drop, and my husband always gets the Bloody Mary. I order mine with raspberry-infused vodka, and my husband gets the jalapeño-infused. His is always spicy, but flavorful. Mine is always tart and sweet. This time was different. Mine was just sweet and had a dried citrus slice floating in it, which is not how it has ever been served. My husband's Bloody Mary had a wooden stick in it and no garnish. There has never been a floating garnish in my drink, and the Bloody Mary has always come with a garnish. Sometimes it is roasted garlic, green olives, and lime. Sometimes an herb sprig and jalapeño slice; another time was garlic, jalapeño, lime, and rosemary sprig. It has never come without the care of a garnish.
Additionally, his cocktail tasted terrible. It was just hot. No flavor, just hot and off-tasting. He sent it back, and later the bartender came by to apologize and said the lime juice was off and they had replaced it. He offered a new drink, which my husband declined.
For dinner, we shared the Puget Sound Steamers, and for the first time the broth was bland. We usually sop up as much as we can with the bread, but it was just flavorless. I was not able to order my usual dinner selection of the Alaskan Chowder because they were out, which has never happened before, but it was not a huge deal, so I chose the Caprese Salad instead, and it was okay. My husband ordered the Rustic Mac + Cheese; we have both ordered this many times, and it has always been delicious except for this night. It tasted off too, very pasty. Almost as if the flour had not been cooked enough in the béchamel, or perhaps too much flour? It was so bland and pasty that it was sent back, too. When we spoke to the server about the mac + cheese and that it tasted like uncooked or pasty flour, she said there was no flour in it, only cheese. The menu describes the dish as a creamy béchamel, which is a flour-based sauce, so her answer surprised me. I did not press it.
Sending food back is not something we enjoy doing, and we left disappointed. We were not charged for the returned items, and we appreciated that. My husband declined a replacement, so he ended up with no dinner, and we stopped somewhere else on the way home. Something was different across both the bar and the kitchen that night. I hope it was a one-off, because five years of consistency earned this place a lot of goodwill with us. At these prices, we expect more, and my husband is reluctant to go back.