After spending far too much time in Chinatown, rarely does service factor largely in my head when considering a restaurant. If the food is good, I can usually put up with a bit of negligence or perfunctory service, as long as no one is outright rude. Furthermore, I like to see how a restaurant handles its service mistakes. One of my favorite services occurred at Sepia, when my waiter delivered a giant hulking piece of pork shoulder to me without a knife in sight. When I turned around to look for him, he gave a start, already hurriedly but unhurriedly gliding across the room to provide the cutlery for me before I could even raise an arm. Right then and there he won me over, though this might also have to do with the fact that he was a dead ringer for Kyle Chandler, the actor of Early Edition and Friday Night Lights, whose smiling compassion could probably settle things on the DMZ.
Today, I arrived with my family in tow, unfortunately made 10 minutes late for our reservation by a series of construction cutting off roads all around the place. Normally, knowing issues of seating and turnover, I like to apologize for lateness, but this was impossible as the hostess was absent. Then she appeared and after a "Hi" began cleaning the hostess stand. While she did this, she continued to ignore us even though the three of us surrounded the stand. Only after a few minutes of eternity did she even think to mention that she had spilled some coffee. A delicate plea for patience from an overworked staff member would have been charming. This just told me where our hostess's priorities lay.
Furthermore, there are other people waiting before us, though there are empty tables. And the whole place looks understaffed, despite it being Sunday brunch at a predominantly brunch place. After she finally acknowledges us and then goes on to seat all the other parties, then our hostess begins running about, cleaning up tables and rearranging chairs between tables with a confused look on her face. No one is seated at these tables when we are finally seated without a hint of apology and given our menus, though we're already a bit soured on the experience.
Luckily, we're hungry. Unfortunately, the first dish is a salmon hash, a dish I always love on paper, but am usually disappointed by a lack of imagination and technique. It's packed with appealing crunchy tator tot-like potatoes, a nice little spin, but the whole dish is amateurish. The vegetables are tasteless, and more egregiously, the salmon is underseasoned and overcooked, a few steps from completely dried out. And trying to get some yolk out of the poached eggs is like squeezing blood from a stone. The hash doesn't necessarily taste bad, but the whole thing just makes me sad.
Things start to get a bit better with the pancakes. Much has been made of the carrot and lemon ones, frequently described as "lighter than air." I didn't manage to quite get airborne, but they were definitely a cut above the usual. The carrot is crested with a dollop of cream cheese and pecans, the whole thing rich and pleasant entirely forgettable. But the lemon is smashing. Sauced with a lemon creme anglaise that should be bottled, set in counterpoint to a biting, beautiful tart slap of lemon curd and speckled with plump blueberries. The only bad part about this dish is that it comes a little stingy on such a gorgeous element. Too bad our waiter never comes back with the requested hot sauce and the extra anglaise and curd. Our inept hostess has to come and ask us if we're getting everything we need. Answer: no. We've had several people come to our table now, most unrecognizable because they keep never coming back.
Things end with us having to flag down a waiter to take our check, after we set it down, rearrange it to make it more obvious that we're done, and even stand up the leather folder. I realize now why our water is set down in a table pitcher for self-pours. The staff likely couldn't even handle water service.
Are the lemon pancakes good enough to come back for? Yes, probably. I just recommend the Kingsbury get their act together before they need to turn into a drive-through.
1/5 stars
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