gordon ramsay would not approve!. and this is the truth. the food, i need to add first, was amazing. well, at least most of it was. and i am a huge fan of gordon ramsay - but if this was one of his shows and he had cameras all over the place - the night would have ended with him screaming in each crew member's face.
the beef wellington (the 20 dollar addition to the three course tasting menu) was amazing. the best i've ever had. so good, that it almost made me forget the terrible service that we were given from the moment we showed up - and the waiter even had a sly smile on his face as he brought it out to us - as if this amazing dish would erase in our minds all of the lax, nonchalant, b-rate service he and his crew had provided us from the moment we arrived.
this place has a michelin star and it should not have one. i'll repeat that - this restaurant does not deserve a michelin rating. part of what you pay for when going to a restaurant is the ambiance, not just the food. and when you're paying top-dollar at a michelin-rated restaurant, you expect not only great food, but a great experience.
we were a party of eight for a friends twenty-fourth birthday and we were seated in a private room near the front entrance. after seeing gordon ramsay on so many great shows and reading so much about the man, i was excited, like a child going to an amusement park, to see what a "gordon ramsay" restaurant is all about. well, i hope the london in new york city is better, because from the moment we walked in the decor was cheesy-looking, glitzy and dated. even the music playing in the background was bizarre - "ice ice baby" by vanilla ice. are you kidding?
and then there was the massive, round, wooden table we were seated at, chipped on the corners, no table cloth and hardly cleaned throughout our meal (i'm sorry people, we dropped a thousand dollars at this place - i'm going to be picky.) the complimentary bread was cold and flavorless - not to mention served almost 30 minutes after we were seated!
our waiter looked like he had just woken from a three-day bender in weho, and i wish i remembered his name because i'd share it with all of you right now. he had a slight attitude with us, and only one assistant helping him serve an eight person table. the drinks took forever to come, and then placing our food order seemed like it would never happen, and when it finally did, the food took even longer to come out.
the food was brought out in increments, some people got served while others sat, waited and watched their friends eat. and when they were done eating, they had to sit and watch as the others ate their food. our desert took the longest to come out - and boy-oh-boy was it small - or maybe it just seemed that way because we had waited so long.
and when the waiter came table-side with a candle behind his palm as we prepared to sing happy birthday to our friend, lo and behold the candle was placed in a teaspoon sized, and i mean "teaspoon", scoop of sorbet, on a massive plate with nothing else on it. you'd think they could have at least cut him a decent slice of cake or something, given the caliber of restaurant and money we were spending.
important: our waiter tried to screw us on money at two different points. first, when we were ordering, he tried to get myself and a friend to order the beef wellington separate from the three course tastingmenuin which case it would have cost 89 dollars by itself, and no where on themenuwas this price listed (we only knew ahead of time from reading it on line).
second, the gratuity is included in the final price on the receipt, but there is a line on the receipt that says "gratuity not included". i'm not kidding. while we were trying to figure out what the extra 150 dollar charge to our tab was - someone from our party finally tapped the waiter on the shoulder and asked him. he shared with us that the gratuity is included, he just forgot to cross that line out.
strange - had we not been more observant we would have tipped an additional 20% on top of that 150 dollars and our waiter would have walked away with more than 300 dollars for b-rate service.
i tried to enjoy this experience, i really did. the food was amazing - and if nothing else, go there for that.
the beef wellington, the beef tartar, and the bluefin tuna carpaccio were all amazing - both visually and in taste. the wine was great. the english sticky toffee pudding was great (but small).....
but if gordon ramsay was sitting there with us he would have been disgusted. no one should ever have to wait that long to get served their food. the service, ambiance and overall experience just wasn't there.
sometimes great food is worth the wait... but not when it costs over a hundred dollars a person.