Linger Revisited

Things have now come full circle: after passing on our booked-a-month-out Linger reservations several months ago to try the rare craft brews at Hops & Pie, we cancelled 5280 Restaurant Week reservations at Trillium to join a couple of friends at Linger last weekend.

The friends who we joined are Linger regulars, and they know many of the employees very well. This was our second visit to Linger; you can read all about my first visit from my initial review.  I'll keep this post brief, since my December 2011 review of Linger was so wordy, and just sum up a few of my thoughts from the weekend.

We decided on four small plates to share among the four of us. I really felt this was a perfect amount of food, and Linger's suggestion of two plates per person is entirely too much.

Linger had scaled back their menu for 5280 Restaurant Week, and they also no longer offered the Crispy Risotto Arancini - one of my "Best Things I Ate in 2011" - since they consider it a fall or winter dish. Bummer.

We started off with the Devils on Horseback (not pictured, $10), which I had at my last visit, and which I've also had a couple times at Root Down. As with the last visit, I felt the bacon-wrapped dates were entirely too sweet, and I much prefer Root Down's version with Peppadew peppers.

Our second dish was their daily special, Mee Krab (not pictured, $10), which is a Thai crispy noodle dish. The dish was very well prepared and we certainly preferred it over the oily Pad Thai we had at our previous visit.

Up next was the Tamarind Braised Short Rib ($18). This plate was significantly more expensive than most of the small plates at Linger, but it was worth it. The meat was extremely tender and well seasoned. The bottom of the dish was filled with rice noodles that had absorbed the flavors of a broth-like beef sauce. Atop the concoction were baby bok choy and jalapenos.

Tamarind Braised Short Rib

Our final small plate of the evening was Yucatan Huarache con Mahi a la Plancha ($15). This is a newer addition to the menu, and was basically a flat fish taco. It was well prepared, but it didn't stand out like the short rib or mee krab.

Yucatan Huarache con Mahi a la Plancha

Since we weren't very impressed with Linger's desserts based on previous visits, we opted for a cheese plate ($15) as our final dish. It arrived with three cheeses, fudge pieces, a fig spread, and a caramel square.

Cheese Plate

It was a lovely sweet and savory pairing, and we all enjoyed it over any of the restarant's standard desserts.

We really enjoyed the food and atmosphere on this particular night. I'm even starting to forgive Linger's intense trendiness, as the hype does seem to be backed up by some great food, attentive service, and a lively ambiance.


Website:
http://www.lingerdenver.com/

The Kitchen

The Kitchen is a much-buzzed Boulder farm-to-table restaurant that elbowed its way to the #14 spot on 5280's 25 Best Restaurants list in October 2011.

Mr. Oyster and I visited The Kitchen a couple years ago in our pre-blog days and we felt a bit lukewarm about the place, but we decided to give it another try last weekend.

The Kitchen lies immediately west of the Pearl Street Mall, just next door to Salt. Adjacent to The Kitchen are its sister restaurants, The Kitchen [Upstairs], and The Kitchen [Next Door].

The Kitchen seems to epitomize Boulder with its ubiquitous use of the word "community," its commitment to renewable energy, and its nonprofit dedicated to gardens in schools.

We stopped by for brunch on a Saturday at 12:30 pm.. The Kitchen doesn't take reservations for brunch, and securing a table was no easy feat. We were told that the wait would be about 20 minutes, and after that 20 minutes passed we were offered a patio seat. Considering how blustery it was that day, I'm surprised the staff would seat people outside. We opted to wait another ten or so minutes for an indoor spot. Once that was "ready", we went inside and then had to wait a few more minutes before the table was fully prepped.

And we were finally ready to begin our meal. Our waiter brought a carafe of water, and I ordered a latte ($3.95).

Latte

My latte was perfect. The swirled foam layer was frothy, thick, and creamy. The sugar chunks on the side made for a beautiful presentation.

My husband decided on the Long Family Farm Ham with poached eggs, Hollandaise, and an English muffin ($14), which The Kitchen curiously spells out on their menu rather than call it "Eggs Benedict." The dish arrived with a side of breakfast potatoes.

Eggs Benedict

The presentation was lovely and the portion was fairly large. The bread was topped with multiple layers of thinly-sliced ham, poached eggs, and a generous helping of creamy hollandaise sauce.

The benedict was good but not particularly special. The hollandaise and ham both tasted a bit bland.

The breakfast potatoes were really the star of this dish. They were perfectly seasoned, and cooked to a crispy exterior and soft interior.

My brunch dish was the Spicy Long Farm Pork Green Chili ($14), which came with two eggs and cornbread.

Spicy Long Farm Pork Green Chili

The Kitchen advertises this dish as "spicy" by the first word in the dish's title, but it really had no heat at all to it. I was disappointed by the lack of spiciness, although the chili was otherwise well-seasoned and filled with large chunks of pork. The cornbread cube was dry and bland; I had to mix it with the chili to make it enjoyable to eat.

I hadn't requested any specifics as far as how the eggs were cooked, but they were served in the exact form I prefer them: over-medium, with just a hint of runny yolk.

Service was a little slow but otherwise good. The waitstaff did a great job of refreshing our water carafe and my husband's iced tea.

The Kitchen offers a great restaurant concept in terms of their commitment to farm-to-table dining and community support. However, their prices feel a bit steep and their brunch offerings just don't quite come together for me.


Casual Dining

(6 of 10)

Pros: High quality ingredients, great lattes
Cons: Food sometimes lacking in flavor and cohesion, long wait for table at brunch

Website:
http://thekitchencommunity.com/the-kitchen-boulder/

5280 Best New Restaurants of 2011

5280 Magazine's March 2012 issue lists the eight best new restaurants in Denver.

Their top selections include three spots that have been reviewed in the Rocky Mountain Oyster: Pizzeria Locale, Le Grand Bistro and Oyster Bar, and Linger.

5280's complete list of the Best New Restaurants of 2011:

Pinche Taqueria
Tag Raw Bar
Charcoal
Pizzeria Locale
Le Grand Bistro and Oyster Bar
Trillium
CafeBar
Linger

Looks like I've got five more restaurants to add to my queue!

Check out the article and let's look forward to more great new restaurants in 2012.

Braised Lamb Shank @ Le Grand Bistro and Oyster Bar

Linger

Well, we finally made it to Linger. About six weeks ago, we had made two different dinner reservations at the restaurant: one for Saturday, November 27, and one for Saturday, December 17. Yes, getting into Linger on a weekend currently requires booking about four weeks out. That means the restaurant and I at least have one thing in common: we both have very busy schedules.

We ended up cancelling our first reservations at the last minute due to the irresistible appeal of craft beer at Hops & Pie. We stuck to our December reservations though, and met up with another couple for dinner last weekend to figure out why everyone's so excited about Linger.

Linger occupies the space of the former Olinger Mortuary, and plays on that history throughout the dining experience. In fact, the restaurant's name derives from Olinger with a simple subtraction of the "O". As a genius advertising maneuver, the "O" on the giant sign atop the restaurant that bears the former mortuary's name has been unplugged, leaving the brightly lit letters "linger" looming over downtown Denver.

Besides its influence on the restaurant's name, the "dead people" theme pervades Linger, from the decor to the menu to the beer options.

As the sister restaurant to Root Down a few blocks away, I had high expectations. Root Down is one of my absolute favorite dinner spots in Denver. Both restaurants advertise a commitment to environmental responsibility and good food, but Linger certainly seems to be the trendier, hottest-place-in-town restaurant of the two.

Linger specializes in a dizzying array of international street food, divided into world regions on the menu. They claim to be a "tapas-style" restaurant and they mean it. The menu offers only small plates, with each dish costing roughly $6 to $16.

The restaurant makes a point to cater certain dishes to food allergies, vegetarians, and vegans, although no one in our group had any dietary aversions.

The waitstaff recommends two small plates per person, a suggestion I completely disagree with. We ordered six plates between the four of us, and that was maybe one plate too many. Keep in mind that much of Linger's food is fried or at least very greasy, so it's hard to eat large portions.

Our meal started with complimentary togarashi-flavored popcorn. While I like the idea of popcorn as a light meal starter, I thought Linger's popcorn tasted stale and flavorless.

Our six small plates consisted of one "Asia" dish: Pad Thai with Wagyu Beef; three "Americas" dishes: Scallop Ceviche, Strongbow Cider Mussels, and Maple Leaf Duck Wings; and two "Europe" dishes: Devils on Horseback and Crispy Risotto Arancini. Though we hadn't necessarily intended them to be so, our selections were some of the most pedestrian offerings on the menu.

The dishes were served in two rounds of three plates each.

First up were the Devils on Horseback ($10):

Devils on Horseback

Linger's Devils on Horseback were comprised of goat cheese stuffed Medjool dates wrapped in bacon. These packed quite a sweet-and-savory punch, with an intense sugary taste from the dates.

While I enjoyed the little devils, Root Down offers a different interpretation of the dish - made with sweet-and-spicy peppadew peppers - that I prefer over Linger's.

Next was the Scallop Ceviche ($11), served with avocado and chips:

Scallop Ceviche

The scallops were fresh, light and citrusy, and were balanced with the creamy avocado and salty corn chips. The dish was apparently prepared with habanero peppers, but I tasted no spiciness whatsoever. This was good ceviche, but many other restaurants in town offer something comparable. For $11, I prefer the scallop ceviche at Vesta Dipping Grill or LoLa (just a block away).

Finishing up that round of small plates were the Strongbow Cider Mussels ($13):

Strongbow Cider Mussels

Besides the obvious Strongbow Cider component, the sauce included garlic, thyme, celery, and grain mustard. The shellfish were accompanied by grilled spicy cheddar bread. The mussels were tasty, but like the ceviche above, they were not terribly memorable.

It was time for our second round of tapas, starting with the Pad Thai with Wagyu Beef ($10 + $5 for Wagyu beef).

Pad Thai with Wagyu Beef

The pad thai tasted a little oily for my taste but was authentically prepared. It wasn't very spicy on its own and needed more heat from the chili sauce served on the side. The Wagyu beef was perfectly cooked, but it had simply been thrown on the side of the dish, with no attempt made at meshing flavors.

We also couldn't resist trying the Maple Leaf Duck Wings ($11):

Maple Leaf Duck Wings

I've had a million chicken wings in my life, but never duck wings. I was concerned that they might be too tough and chewy, but the meat was actually impressively tender. The wings were drenched in a sweet and tangy blood orange hot sauce, which made them extremely messy. I realize wings are supposed to be messy, but Linger felt a little too upscale for me to drench my face in wing sauce.

And finally, Linger's menu held one of the high points of my many 2011 dining experiences, the Crispy Risotto Arancini ($11 for three, we added a fourth for an additional $3):

Crispy Risotto Arancini

Arancini are apparently a traditional Sicilian food, comprising of fried rice balls filled with meat sauce. I'm afraid the above "as-served" photo makes them look more like the world's most confused donut holes and does not do justice to the their delicious innards. Let's take a closer look at a severed arancini:

Crispy Risotto Arancini

There it is: a creamy risotto exterior with a crisp, fried shell, filled with a delicious bolognese sauce. The meaty bolognese sauce was particularly rich and well-seasoned. Every bite of the arancini was outstanding, and they were one the few things I ate at Linger that didn't bring to mind a similar-but-better dish somewhere else in town.

Timing of our various small plates was a bit too fast; we were rushed into relocating food to different dishes and juggling too many items on the table. Also, our individual plates quickly became covered in sauces and straggling bits from various dishes. With the extreme array of foods served at Linger, these turned into a flavor hodgepodge that blended unfavorably with whatever subsequent item we tried to throw on the plate.

We finished off the meal with the dessert trio ($10), which included mini versions of the Peanut Butter & Jelly Cup, the Ovaltine & Oreos, and the Mississippi Mud Pie.

Dessert Trio. Left to Right: Peanut Butter & Jelly Cup, Ovaltine & Oreos, and Mississippi Mud Pie

Linger offers a couple more exotic dessert options, but they stuck to close to home with their dessert trio selections (so much for international street food!). The Peanut Butter & Jelly Cup tasted overwhelmingly of peanut butter. Similarly, the Mississippi mud pie was basically a very one-dimensional chocolate cake. The Ovaltine & Oreos dessert was a little more exciting, comprising of a very strongly Ovaltine-flavored Bavarian cream atop an "Oreo" made of chocolate cookies and mascarpone.

I'm disappointed and puzzled that Linger veered sharply away from their international street food theme and instead offers these very tame, all-American desserts. The world flavors that influenced their small plates menu could have easily produced a half dozen interesting and delicious sweet treats, but instead Linger serves boring mud pies.

Other than being underwhelmed by their desserts, Linger basically delivered on an ambitiously diverse menu. All the small plates were tried were well-executed, though only the arancini stands out as a superlative dish. I commend Linger for their commitment to environmentally responsible, quality food, but some of that backbone of substance gets diluted with distractions of the restaurant's trendy feel and the pervasive dead body motif.

Linger felt reasonably priced considering the quality and quantity of food served. As I mentioned earlier, one to one-and-a-half small plates per person is probably the ideal ratio. Visiting Linger with a large group will give you the best opportunity to sample multiple dishes.

As a side note, 5280 Magazine recently published an excellent Linger review in their December 2011 issue. The article discusses Linger's background in depth and reviews many of their small plates. It's well worth reading for more information about the restaurant, and I found myself in complete agreement with the author regarding Linger's food and service.

There are still a dozen or so dishes on the menu that I'm curious to try, and I need to check out the amazing patio views that everyone raves about. Linger is certainly worth another visit, but it may be another couple of months before our busy schedules can align.


Casual Dining

(7 of 10)

Pros: Good food and service, reasonably priced
Cons: Dessert was boring, hard to get reservations


Website:
http://lingerdenver.com/

Hops & Pie

Let me break down the sequence of events that led us to Hops & Pie last night:

3:13 pm: My husband receives a photo of last night's Hops & Pie "Beers on Tap" list from one of his friends. The beer menu includes his beloved - and extremely hard to find - "Supplication" by Russian River.

3:14 pm: Unable to turn down the immediate potential for Supplication on tap, we cancel our reservations at Linger that we'd made a month earlier.

3:33 pm: My husband calls one of his beer aficionado buddies and informs him that he and his wife must join us on the journey for some craft beer on tap.

4:30 pm: We leave our place down south to head 35 minutes away for Supplication on tap. Sorry, Linger. Your international street food menu will have to wait.

5:06 pm: Hello, Hops & Pie.

And that is how we ended up at Hops & Pie, and not at Linger, on the Saturday night after Thanksgiving.

So Hops & Pie offers just about the best craft beer selection in Denver. And they sell pizza. It's really the simplest, most genius, and most inevitably successful business model imaginable for a front range establishment.

Located at 38th and Tennyson in the historic Berkeley neighborhood, Hops & Pie lies off the beaten path of Denver's main restaurant and bar scenes. Alongside Hops & Pie on Tennyson street are an eclectic mix of restaurants, coffee shops, a yoga studio, and an antique store that my mother would be happy to spend all day in.

Hops & Pie's location is small, really too small to accommodate the beer-loving Denver public. It comprises one long, narrow room, with the bar area taking up half the space.

Despite our early arrival just after 5 pm, the restaurant's tiny space and the fact that three groups of people had monopolized all available tables meant we were in for a bit of a wait. Half an hour later, after squeezing the four of us around a small table sandwiched between the bar and another table, we were all seated.

The beer menu at Hops & Pie is really unmatched by any other bar in Denver. They have managed to offer - either on tap or in bottle form - some of the absolute highest regarded and hardest to find craft beers in the country.

Unfortunately, this being complete beer-snob territory, the menu was extremely sparse on the light, "girly" pilsners and wheat beers that I prefer.

My husband enjoyed a 375 mL bottle of Pliny the Elder, an IPA from Russian River ($11), followed by a 375 mL bottle of Consecration, also by Russian River, a barrel-aged ale ($19). I drank water and longed silently for a Michelob Ultra.

Pliny the Elder IPA by Russian River

Consecration Barrel-Aged Ale by Russian River

For dinner, we started with their IPA Mac & Cheese ($7.5), made with cheddar, smoked ham, peas, herbed bread crumbs, and of course, IPA.

IPA Mac n Cheese

Think of an outstanding home style mac and cheese, made even better with the use of beer. The rich, cheesy sauce had subtle, pleasantly bitter IPA undertones. The addition of sweet green peas and large, smoky ham pieces further improved the flavor. The four of us ate every last bite.

The mac n cheese was followed up with one of their 16" Artisan pizzas, topped with prosciutto, mozzarella, sauteed spinach, banana peppers, cherry tomatoes, and roasted garlic ($17).

Artisan Pizza slice

After our excitement at Hops & Pie's beer selection and delicious mac n cheese, this pizza was a letdown. Basically, it was bad. The crust was bland, and there was no sauce. While I enjoyed most of the toppings, the banana peppers were straight from a jar, and their briny flavor overwhelmed everything else on the pizza.

Good pizza should be pretty easy to crank out, right? Especially by owners who are smart enough to tap into Denver's palate for craft beers, and who have enough kitchen skills to put together the incredible IPA Mac n Cheese we had just consumed. So I was perplexed that the pizza would be so completely disappointing.

I did notice, however, that surrounding diners had stuck to the "create your own" pizza selections made with hand-tossed crusts and served with their house-made tomato sauce and cheese blends. They looked much tastier than our pizzas, but of course I have no way to verify how they tasted.

Anyway, we couldn't walk away from Hops & Pie without trying some of their cereal-based marshmallow treats.  We ordered their Super Treat, containing Cocoa Puffs and Peanut Butter Captain Crunch ($3), and a Crispy Treat ($2), made of traditional rice crisp cereal.

Super Treat

Crispy Treat

Not to brag, but I'm pretty much a cereal-and-marshmallow-treat connoisseur, and I must say that all such treats should be evaluated based on the following criteria: 1) Ratio of marshmallow cream to cereal, 2) Ductility, 3) Butteriness

Both treats were a resounding success in all three categories, although I must say the butteriness of these treats was extreme, and some people may find them too rich.

The service at Hops & Pie was very good. Our waitress removed one of our beers from the tab when we notified her that it tasted basically awful (likely on the brewer's end and not Hops & Pie's).

By the time we got ready to leave, which was only about 7:30 pm, the small restaurant was packed with patrons mulling around the bar area as table and bar seating had long ago filled up.

If Hops & Pie can upgrade its pizza offerings, it will rule Denver. Otherwise, its still worth the long drive if you love craft beer, mac n cheese, and cereal treats.


Casual Dining

(5 of 10)

Pros: Unmatched craft beer selection, excellent IPA Mac n Cheese and Cereal Treats, good service
Cons: Not crazy about pizza, crowded

SALT

It seems that all of America is clamoring for people to cut their sodium intake, and Salt in Boulder is serving it up to customers in generously filled little trays.

My husband, my mother and I showed up at Salt looking for brunch at noon on Sunday of Labor Day weekend. The outdoor seating was filled but the inside was maybe only a third occupied. I was surprised at how much busier Salt's next door neighbor, The Kitchen, appeared.

We were soon seated indoors and presented with the salt selection shown above, which consisted of a pink Bolivian salt and a white Sicilian salt.

The brunch menu at Salt offers a variety of sweet and savory dishes, and we couldn't resist the allure of the Glazed & Cinnamon Doughnuts ($6) as an "appetizer".

Glazed and Cinnamon Doughnuts

These were incredible. They were served with a tangy lemon curd and a spiced chocolate sauce that had just a slight hint of heat. The warm doughnuts tasted freshly fried and had a perfectly soft and light texture.

For our main dishes, I ordered the Chilaquiles Negro ($12). Chilaquiles is a traditional Mexican dish, and I believe chilaquiles roughly translates into something like "intentionally soggy egg-covered nachos that are delicious and you eat them for breakfast".

Chilaquiles Negro

This came smothered in refried black beans, salsa verde, onions, roasted chicken, cilantro, two eggs over easy, and crème fraiche. I never really figured out how I was supposed to it eat (is it really messy finger food or really tricky fork food?), although it was served in its authentic form. The combination of ingredients was outstanding, especially the very fresh and perfectly cooked eggs. I ate as much as I could and then let my husband dig in to finish it off.

Speaking of my husband, he ordered the Roasted Long Farm Pork Loin Sandwich ($15).

Roasted Long Farm Pork Loin Sandwich

This monster of a sandwich included spinach, fontina mornay, bacon, scallion scrambled eggs, and polenta fries on the side. It amounted to an awful lot of protein in every bite.  The sandwich was good but very filling and lacked a punch of flavor. My husband only ate half of it before throwing in the towel (but he was then able to finish off my chilaquiles).

The polenta fries were well cooked and win novelty points, but I realized I wasn't enough of a polenta lover to eat more than just a few.

And for my mother, the House Smoked Wild Alaskan Salmon Melt ($15):

House Smoked Wild Alaskan Salmon Melt

The salmon came smothered in fontina cheese on a locally made Udi's bagel. I enjoyed the smoked salmon but the salmon coupled with the cheese made for a very salty meal.

Speaking of salty, considering the name of the restaurant and the copious amount of it sitting in front of us during our meal, I expected the food to be very lightly salted, thereby allowing customers to use the fancy foreign sodium chloride to their heart's desire on their meal. This was not the case. The food seemed to have typical restaurant sodium amounts in it, and I felt no need to add any additional salt. I tried a tiny bit of the two varieties just to see what they tasted like; I'm no gourmet but it was just normal salt to me.

The food was very good but generally didn't blow me away (ok, the doughnuts were awesome). Great service and atmosphere. I would definitely visit again, especially to try Salt for dinner.


Casual Dining

 (7 of 10)

Pros: Great food, local ingredients
Cons: Portions too large


Website:
http://www.saltboulderbistro.com/

Rice Bistro & Sushi

Tucked very very deep in the south suburbs lies Rice Bistro & Sushi (or RICE Bistro & Sushi as they have on their website), which my husband, myself and two other friends checked out last weekend.

Rice lies at Holly and Orchard in The Orchards shopping area, in a small building adjacent to a Panera and across the parking lot from a King Soopers. Definitely suburban.

We were there on Saturday night for a very late dinner - I believe we got there a little after 8 pm. The restaurant was maybe half occupied, with a separate bar area that stayed busy through the night.

The menu at Rice lists has just about every imaginable Asian dish, as well as impressive list of cold sakes. But we were just there for the sushi. Oh, and sake too I suppose.

Rice's sushi menu includes all your typical sushi concoctions, as well as an entire page of more ambitious and creative rolls. After asking our waiter for recommendations for a spicy roll, he suggested something off the menu: the explosion roll, containing tuna and cream cheese rolled into a fried egg roll wrapper, and topped with a sweet and spicy sauce.

Explosion Roll

These fried little pieces of heaven were high-calorie and delicious and not quite like anything I've tried before. The sauce was spicy as promised.

We then dug into an assortment of more traditional sushi rolls: a shrimp tempura roll ($6.75), a spider roll ($7.5), an "Alaska" roll (crab, smoked salmon, shrimp, avocado, $10), and a spicy salmon roll ($5.5).

Clockwise from top right: Spider Roll, Spicy Salmon Roll, Alaska Roll, Shrimp Tempura Roll

These were all good rolls, although nothing stood out worth getting excited about.

For our sushi finale, we decided to conclude the meal with something more adventurous: the Mexican Roll ($14), which came with Spicy super white tuna, scallions and jalapeño topped with salmon and guacamole. Our waiter confirmed that the guacamole that comes with the roll was homemade.

Mexican Roll

I was intrigued by the idea of guacamole with sushi. It must be even better than plain avocado with sushi, right? Wrong. It was good but not amazing, and the flavors of the guacamole didn't blend well with the sushi. I probably should have expected that, but I was disappointed nonetheless.

We enjoyed our meal at Rice and our waiter was very helpful and knowledgeable, but nothing from the menu stood out as particularly special. Worth visiting if you're in the area and looking for Asian food.


Casual Dining

(7 of 10)



Pros: Extremely varied menu, good service
Cons: Food is good but nothing special, strip mall location


Website:
http://www.ricebistrodenver.com/

Beatrice & Woodsley

Beatrice & Woodsley has been on our radar for a while, after we'd heard multiple stories about aspen trees inside and extremely quirky bathrooms. Oh, and delicious food.

Last Sunday night, with four other lucky taste testers joining us, it was time for a visit. Before we even made it to the front door, however, we were greeted with some irritations.

There's barely a sign out front, parking nearby is tricky, and there's no valet. That was my first clue that convenience and comfort aren't top priority at Beatrice & Woodsley. However, if you are able to make it in, you'll be rewarded with one of the most elaborate and unique restaurant settings in Denver.

Bar Area and Entrance

Wood everywhere, chainsaws supporting shelves, and aspen trees right next to your table. The interior was definitely spectacular and a little spooky. There's some imaginary story of a woman marrying a lumberjack behind it all. I really didn't get it.

Bar Area

Beautiful, yes. Comfortable and practical, not really.

The six of us sat at a "normal" looking table, but I noticed many neighboring tables were built of wood and sat almost at the same level as the seating benches. They looked extremely uncomfortable.

Although there were six of us eating, all I've reviewed are the dishes Mr. Oyster and I split.

(Sorry about the dark photos. Spooky lighting = bad iPhone pictures).

We decided to split three small plates. Our first dish was the Crawfish Beignets ($9). From the menu: Crawfish and fresh corn batter, filled with spicy red pepper aioli.

Crawfish Beignets

The beignets were rich had that perfectly doughy, fried texture, but they didn't contain quite enough crawfish for my liking.

Next up was Got Ewe Udder My Thumb (ha...ha....how clever, $13): Ugly Goat ricotta, yogurt and chevre in their own preparations with fried fresh peas, braised carrot and a crisp pasta shell. Note that the "ewe" in the title of this dish is a misnomer as Ugly Goat, I believe, produces only goat dairy - no sheep's milk cheese on this plate.

Got Ewe Udder My Thumb. Translation: Lots of goat cheese

My husband and I both loved this dish, as it was not only wonderfully savory and rich tasting but used local Ugly Goat cheeses.

Our final small plate was A Day at the Peach ($10). From the menu: Spicy peach bbq pork shoulder, succotash salad and pickled watermelon.

A Day at the Peach: BBQ Pork Shoulder

This was also a very nice small plate. While I didn't get much of a peach taste, the pork was extremely tender and pleasantly sweet. The pickled watermelon, however, was way too salty.

The highlight of our meal was definitely dessert. We ordered the Malted Milk Chocolate Custard ($10).

Malted Milk Chocolate Custard
 Disclaimer: We sort of dug in, realized we'd forgotten to take a picture, and then attempted
to reconstruct. It looked better than this at first presentation. Sorry about that. 

The custard came with fresh raspberries, almond florentine cookies, and whipped cream. Every part of this dessert was excellent. The custard had a rich, pudding-like flavor and consistency. We loved it.

The restaurant was only about half full, but service was fairly slow throughout the night.

Now, changing subjects, let's get back to the issues with convenience and comfort at Beatrice & Woodsley.  Let's talk about the bathrooms.

I hated their bathrooms. Some people may think they're fun and quirky and interesting. I didn't. I want privacy and practicality and ease of use in the ladies' room. I had none of these at Beatrice & Woodsley.

Using the bathroom at Beatrice & Woodsley involves one irritation after the next. First, you need to figure out how to get into the toilet areas (Just push the door. I know, it looks weird. There's only one toilet in there, so if you can't get in it's because the door is locked). Then, you need to face an entire restaurant of people staring at you as you try to wash your hands. Getting the water to flow involves pulling on these chain thingees, waiting forever for the water to flow down, attempting to wash your hands, realizing the soap is some powdery garbage, and then waiting forever for the water flow to stop when you're done.

This may be in a tie with Root Down for worst restroom situation, and Beatrice & Woodsley's problems are completely self-inflicted.

Overall, food was very good but not spectacular. The decor was beautiful, but only exciting enough to draw customers in for a single visit. I wish Beatrice & Woodsley were more focused on serving customers and less fixated on their fancy decorations.


Casual Dining

 (6 of 10)

Pros: Good food, impressive decor
Cons: Too many inconveniences in dining experience, slow service


Website:
http://beatriceandwoodsley.com