We recently ate here and had a nice enough dining experience but if my partner and I hadn't been totally caught up in a great personal conversation we would have likely to be miffed. I will say though that I think there is a silver lining to this review.
The guy who was our waiter, Colin, is a very nice young man and he is also in charge of the wine list for Nell's. Sadly, there was a representative there from Buty wines that night who hogged a lot of his attention so we were left to wait for the first 5-10 minutes without so much as a hello from Colin. We were given water but that was it.
Once we got our beverages (martinis) ordered, and received, things seemed to be going along just lovely. We both ordered from the $25 pre-fixe menu, which had some lovely offerings, and the first courses came along just fine. I'll point out that the standard menu also looked divine and we plan on eating here again to try more options in the future. To start, I got the kohlrabi soup and Michael got the liver terrine - both which were very good. We also ordered wine with dinner which was lovely although I'm sorry to say I've forgotten already which one it was from the menu.
Our main course was to be the trout (for me) and the pork (for Michael). This is where it got dicey again. Two tables that had come in significantly later than me and Michael both ended up getting their meals ahead of us (they ordered after us) and one of them was actually about done with their dinner and leaving when Colin noticed and mentioned it to the kitchen staff. According to him they just shrugged their shoulders and then put together our dinners. No explanation, no apology, just a "oops" and a shoulder shrug. Thankfully Colin is more adept at being a professional waitstaff person and he quickly tried to make amends. Unfortunately I had to send back my trout for further cooking as about 3/4 of the interior of the fish was uncooked when it came out to the table. I would suggest if you like a less well done piece of pork that you make sure to order to taste - they cook it medium there. It was still good and Michael hadn't given a specific temperature request to Colin.
The re-cooked trout was lovely so I am willing to go here again. The desserts choices we got with our pre-fixe dinner were grapefruit with mango sorbet and honey (me) with a macaroon and for Michael the cinnamon creme brulee with a chocolate cookie of some sort. All very good. Colin gave us a dessert wine with our desserts as a way to make up for the missed timing of our dinner. As I mentioned earlier in this post, we ended up being fine with it since the two of us were having a very meaningful personal exchange throughout the 3.25 hours we were here. Yes, dinner took THAT long but we did enjoy it. It almost reminded me of dining in Europe where the pace is much more mellow and dinner isn't limited to an hour at most. I'm okay with that as it forces those at the table to really spend some quality time together...
Another positive is that you can use www.OpenTable.com to book reservations.
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