Dan and I had originally planned on going to the new Mole outpost in Williamsburg but as we were walking there we noticed that this place was open. Now, the only reason why we even bothered entertaining the idea of eating here was because his friend Greg used to live right next door and for years we would watch as they took forever to build and open this restaurant. I mean, seriously, we had watched for at least 5 years as they started construction, stopped construction and then started up again. So we felt like it was almost our duty to check it out.
Given how long it has taken them to open this place, I should have known that it would be a bad experience. Now, I understand that there will be bumps in the road when you first open a restaurant, but this place seemed like it could have really waited until they got their act together. The decor was just weird. The outside was covered in this "fake" metal ivy and then inside there are the metal "paintings" of strippers, which apparently is an homage to what this space used to be (a go-go bar). They don't make good use of the space as there were no tables (the picture above is a bit mis-leading) in the middle of the restaurant, so it just seemed really empty. Their menus were printed on resume paper and then stapled together which just seemed low brow. I mean you couldn't really have bought menu holders or something?
I couldn't quite grasp the theme of the menu...I think it was American bistro food? But then again there was edamame on the menu which was weird. They had a beetroot salad, mussels, scallops, mushroom ragout, brick chicken and hanger steak. Dan got the sea scallops ($19) with fennel salad and oranges and I got the brick chicken ($21). We also each got a cocktail; I got the peach smash and he got the billionaire cocktail ($12). It kind of bothered me that there were no prices for the cocktails (although I had guessed them to be around $10) and $12 is a bit steep for this place. Plus they clearly had beer but it was not listed on the cocktail menu which annoyed me as well. I will say that you could tell that the owners/chefs were nervous about opening because they kept walking around and talking to people. They were really nice and I didn't really have the heart to say anything bad. While we waited for our food that gave us a plate of raw chinese radishes and butter. Um, weird and not tasty. I would have rather of just had bread and butter.
Our food came out and the presentation was just eh. It didn't really feel like they put much time into making the food look nice. Dan's dish only had 3 scallops and then a ton of fennel in the middle and literally 4 orange slices on the side. I had 2 fairly medium sized chicken pieces (thigh and breast) and it was supposed to have come with spetzle but I couldn't really see it and it was mixed in with a tons of sauteed onions and grapes (also weird). As I cut into the chicken I noticed that it was a bit undercooked but I could handle it, although I could definitely see some people not being able to handle it. Dan's scallops were also undercooked, much more so than mine. At one point it almost seemed like he was eating scallops sashimi-style. I will say that the other piece of my chicken was juicy and tasted fine but there was nothing amazing about it and the spetzle was pretty much non-existent. The best part of the meal was the cocktails. They were actually pretty good and decent sized. They would be better off getting rid of the food and just being a cocktail bar. All in all, we ended up spending $81 which was completely un-justified for what we got. I wished we had stuck with going to Mole instead. But alas, after years of seeing it come together we just had to try. Sorry guys, but Trix are not for kids or really even adults.
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