maynards market & kitchen

maynards always pleases me every time. the ingredients are always fresh and prepared perfectly. everything is made in house so every dish not only has mastery butgreatquality. the atmosphere and space is so lovely and service is fantastic. maynards hits the marks on every category!

happy hour. my wife and i stopped at maynards for a little boost before taking on 2nd saturday. it was happy hour. we had a couple of beers and split a mushroom pizza. fantastic crust.greatexperience.

wonderful restaurant. had dinner in the kitchen. it is a beautiful place with thoroughly professional service and delicious food -- i had a lettuce salad appetizer with a side of frites followed by game hen -- and agreatwine menu.

great food.greatbeer. i got agreatslice of steak and fries for $11. seemed like a $20 meal. could be lunch pricing. only 10 beers on draught. but wow. what a selection. rogue dead guy. nimbus monkeyshine. four peaks kilt lifter. guinness. lagunitas ipa. bell's amber. good place for having dinner or drinks with friends. no tvs though. nice ambience in old train station. can sit outside and have trains occasionally rush past ya. oven fired pizza that i will try next. looks like fancy pizza.

how did they drop the ball on this one?. i understand that maynards is owned by the same people who have the hotel congress. so i cant figure out how they could get the club congress right and the cup cafe so right and get this maynards so wrong. they did agreatjob fixing up that old space in the train station but the restaurant kinda blows.

servers dont know whats going on. food takes too long. managers preen around looking even less aware of anything. total deer in headlights on the two busy nights we were down there. i guess they cant handle more than say a dozen customers at a time.

neither the servers or managers could tell us anything useful about the wine selection. their list seemed to be going out of its way to be ecclectic but ends up just being eratic. i mean i applaud any list that has the juevos to not insert grocery store standards like clos du bois or kendall jackson. but give us something that is at least somewhat familiar. instead its all these obscure varietals from spain and some labels from california that are so backwoods that to find the actual vineyards they came from would resemble the movie deliverence.

the food tries too hard too. too trendy and weird. nothing has a home-cooked appeal or (at the opposite end of the spectrum) the finese of a true novelle fine dining menu. the whole place just tries to be cool. and that's how you dont suceed in being cool. i wish that the owners of the congress, a place that exudes cool because its not trying to be cool, would've had enough sense to get some of their more competent people in there running maynards.

that "zagat" member.... i just noticed three sparkling reviews for maynards in here by a supposed zagat member. three reviews all written by the same person? in all three he/she makes maynards out to be the finest restaurant in the universe. if you look in his/hers profile maynards is their only good review, whereas maynards's competition gets trashing reviews. i just think that's funny. their staff or management must be trying to pull a fast one on us!


-----29 dec, 2009-----

agreatplace to be bored out of your mind.. i don't get all thegreatbuzz about this place. i didn't think very much of the food. its like they too hard try to be creative and you end up with a petite portion with pineapples shoved in there for no reason.

i like whiskey and they have some decent ones there, but when taking the wife there... you gotta do a bottle of wine with her, and that's where they are really lacking.

the servers don't know how to describe their wines, nor how to pour them properly. i almost thought she was gonna not take the foil off before pouring. the wine list has nothing that i recognize, and since no one seems to know anything about the wine list you are left taking a gamble to order anything. they will offer to sell you a glass to sample.... but that means tacking an extra ten bucks onto a bottle that you could've ordered with confidence if they knew what it was.

its noisy and crowded there right by the train station. skip this place and their lame market. the market is nice looking, but has nothing you can't get if you walk like two blocks over to 4th avenue co-op.

what agreatstart to a new and exciting downtown. the look and feel of the place is amazing. you have to look hard to see the attention to detail, its all around you. i would like to meet the people who built this place. it has a classic feel that is built to last. the owner was giving a tour of the place showing off the many details. hand made doors with the coolest locks i have ever seen. the lights that hang from the ceiling accent the ceiling perfectly. it has a industrial revolution feel of steel and quality unseen in todays world. its a pleasure to live in tucson where such craftsmen reside. the food and drinks are great. a little pricey for the service. a tip for the owners, keep the hotel congress cig smoking tattoo culture caged in the pen across the street. maynards has the potential to be a tucson landmark. the kind of place to take out of town visitors. in todays economy there must be a higher pool to hire from. come on cooks, keep your shoes off the cities building. have some respect. you are not the center of the universe now go make me some bean pies...b.....