This new incarnation of Halie is tough to pin down - like before, there's a wine bar, a restaurant bar and the restaurant itself randomly scattered through the building; we ate in the restaurant so ..
A lovely, comfortable room, high ceilings and enough noise-damping to avoid the cavernous echo that sometimes accompanies large spaces like this. We had a charming and attentive waitress who was happy to move us to a table closer to the fireplace (it was a very cold evening) and seemed really genuinely interested in making sure we had everything we needed.
The by-the-glass wine list doesn't seem to be the 50-choice version as mentioned by another reviewer here, but there's enough interesting choices to keep most people happy. We went for a viognier each to start, and a meritage to follow, both were good (and nice Reidel glasses also!)
We chose a mixture of menu items and specials for appetizer and entree, and were slighly disappointed by most of them - the "Onion and Olive Tart" wasn't a tart at all, merely a base of a circle of puff pastry topped by an oddly underseasoned onion mixture. Seared sashimi was also strangely bland. Our entrees of pork chop with cabbage and monkfish were 50-50, the chop was great, the monkfish itself fine, but the accompanying diced vegetables were close to seriously undercooked, and again oddly flavorless.
Things perked up with a flawless cheese plate from the dessert menu, and a great idea - a tasting flight of four choices from the port, dessert wine and sherry list, a real pleasure.
So we left with an odd mixture of opinions - lovely place, nice people, some really underflavored food but some great cheese and wine.
The title of the review, by the way, was what we were told by the hostess when we arrived. It seemed to sum up some of the confusion of Madeleines - you're not quite sure what to make of it.
Pros: Dessert Wine Tasting, Cheese Selection
Cons: Some underflavored dishes
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