Anita and I did the 25 for $25 menu at Brasa on Monday night with another couple.
Before our friends arrived, we started with cocktails at the bar: Maritime ale for me and a devastatingly stiff champoire (champagne and pear brandy) for Anita. To her credit, the bartender caught us comparing notes and making faces over Anita's drink and immediately offered to remake it: "Is it too strong?" It was and she did. Very tasty little concoction.
The food was...uneven. My starter -- beef carpaccio with sel gris, white truffle oil, arugula, and shaved parmesan -- had way too much salt and I couldn't taste the beef at all underneath all the other stuff. Anita's spinach and vinaigrette with goat cheese and shiitake salad was overdressed ("Completely sodden," snorts Anita, "And just one little piece of goat cheese"). One of our friends ordered the spanish calamari and offered a taste as they arrived. I think that he liked them, because they were gone when I looked up. I never got a sample, but in retrospect I'm glad that I didn't get my fingers too close.
The same friend ordered the paella and had good things to say about it. My petit filet was much better than my starter. It was topped with a touch of Cabrales compound butter, a reduction sauce, and served over potato puree. A well-prepared classic. Anita's main was a chicken tagine: half a chicken with moroccan couscous and some poached dried fruit. This dish was a disaster. The couscous was oily and had way too many almonds. The chicken was dry -- completely unforgivable (practically incomprehensible) considering the cooking method. The sauce was sweet despite the server's assurances that it was a savory dish. More on this later.
For dessert, Anita and I both had cheese from Brasa’s cheese table, a long slab of (?marble?) festooned with around fifteen wedges. Points for presentation, but the placement near the front door seemed weird to me -- especially since the table was something of a gathering point for the service staff.
Anyway, we had our server select our cheese and received six serviceable (if somewhat boring) slices: Mimolette, Agur, Humboldt Fog, and three others that I don’t remember. Hard to criticize, I suppose, as we were offered the opportunity to choose for ourselves. But it would have been nice if our server had at least tried to ascertain our level of cheesy adventurousness.
Of course, that would have required our server to operate at a level that she hadn’t even come close to all night. She abandoned us after taking our drink order, finally reappearing with said drinks and a, “Ready to order?” Questions about the food were answered with a verbatim recitation of the menu listing, and we were told at least twice, “Oh, it’s a savory dish.” I chose a McCrea Syrah (a.k.a. Old Faithful) for our meal after joking to our dining companions that I wasn’t going to bother asking about a couple of interesting looking bottles for fear of being told that they were “savory,” or perhaps that they were made with grapes.
As I write this, I’m trying to view the experience through the lens of what happens at just about any restaurant on a Monday night -- you better not expect the A team, because you’re not going to get it. Nevertheless, I can’t imagine bothering with a return visit at full price. I would, however, go for their half-price bar food and drinkies, as the space is inviting and the menu looked tasty.
We’re off to Assaggio tonight. I do love this promotion.