I often get asked "where should I go to eat?" and I usually have a few good suggestions. But I realize that most of my suggestions are downtown or in Brooklyn. So when my friend from high school asked for a suggestion of a nice-ish place in Hell's Kitchen I was actually stumped. I know a few divey good Thai places like Pam's Real Thai, Wodee Siam, or Pure Thai Shophouse. But that's all I got in that area. Unfortunately we were supposed to have dinner at Print in the Ink48 Hotel but they screwed up our reservation so we were left walking around 9th Ave looking for a place to eat at 9pm on Saturday. Somehow we ended up at Eatery which looked nice enough from the outside.
From the outside I assumed that the menu would be all-American, it pretty much was with lots of salads, pasta and burgers. But then it also had this weird Pan-Asian and Mexican vibe to it with dumplings, tofu stir-fry, and quesadillas. Weird right? It's generally not a great sign when a restaurant has got an identity crisis. In honor of Cino de Mayo they were offering a Mahi Mahi special with tostadas and a chipotle cream. The waiter was raving about it so I decided go for it. My friend got the quesadilla and the fish tacos while his friend got the burger. Instead of bread, they offer you these Asian-like shrimp chips with sesame seeds. It was actually pretty good and a nice alternative to bread. The quesadilla came out first and was also pretty decent. Nothing spectacular but the tortilla was nice and soft and the grilled chicken was juicy. While I wasn't expecting the Mahi Mahi dish to be a real homage to Cinco de Mayo, I thought it would be more "Mexican". Instead it was a decently cooked piece of fish on top of essentially what was a bunch of corn chips, lettuce and tomato. The chipotle cream didn't have a lot of flavor to it and I would have preferred actual sour cream. The dish was fine, it just seemed like something I probably could have made myself. There wasn't a whole lot of finesse to the dish. I took a look at my friend's fish tacos they also seemed to lack any real sophistication to it. I'm not saying my food has to be fancy but it should at least look like something I can't re-create so easily at home. When the waiter came around to offer dessert, we got convinced by his raving description of the fruit tart (I really need to learn that it's a waiter's job to convince people to order stuff they may not want). The tart also wasn't very impressive. The fruit it in was actually fresh and big but the custard in it was way too sweet.
All in all, I wasn't super impressed with The Eatery food-wise. But the decor is nicer than your usual Hell's Kitchen dive and the waitstaff was sweet. Next time I'm in Hell's Kitchen I"ll probably still stick to the Thai hole in the walls. Total price: $43/pp with tax, tip and cocktails.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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