Bareli's By the Sea Visited 8/12/2017 2.5 Forks

Bareli's By the Sea  1505 Ocean Ave., Spring Lake, NJ 07762

Every summer, a good friend from B-school invites a few of us down to Spring Lake for a weekend of relaxation and unwinding.  It's such a nice reprieve from the city and while it's definitely got its fair share of giant homes, it has a much more relaxed feel than the Hamptons. 

This summer the weekend that my friends and I all went coincided with my friend Richelle's birthday, so Kristin booked a reservation at Bareli's on Saturday night.  The view is great as it's literally right by the water and the set-up is open and spacious.  We were running a bit late from our 7:30 reservation, so we called to let them know and the guy on the other end said it was no problem at all. Great!  We head over as fast as we can and get there by 7:50pm and the hostess there was clearly not the same person who answered the phone.  She looked at us with this deadpan look and told us our reservation was at 7:30, which we said we knew and that's why we called.  After a bit of discussion, she walked us to the back room and asked if we could wait at the bar while they cleared a table for us.  We had actually reserved a table outside but, hey we were late, so we couldn't really argue with that.  The table that was supposed to be ours was already cleared, they just needed to put silverware on it, which literally took them 20 minutes to do.  I know it's a busy Saturday night but it shouldn't take that long to set a table.  

We finally did sit down and it kind of all went downhill from there.  One caveat is that I will say our waiter was very nice and attentive.  I don't think any of the service issues were his fault but I'll get to that in a second.  The menu here is pretty standard sea-side Italian food.  Kind of what you would expect from and for a Jersey crowd.  We started with an order of the calamari ($13), watermelon salad and a penne ala grappa ($18) and then most of us ended up getting the scallops ($35) for our entree.  The starters were totally fine - nothing mind blowing but satisfying starters none the less.  I personally find watermelon feta salad to be really weird combination and this one seemed like a salad that someone threw together for a backyard BBQ.  There was just something missing from it.  Then we waited and waited and waited for our food.  We must have waited over 40 minutes for our food that even our waiter was embarrassed by it.  While he was very apologetic, in my opinion a good restaurant would offer something in return for the wait, either a round of drinks or some kind of appetizer because we were all ready to keel over in hunger.  Mind you, scallops should be one of THE fastest dishes to cook because they taken no more than 5-10 mins to sear on each side.  At this point, half the restaurant had cleared out and it was close to 10pm.  We finally got our food and it was one of those moments where you were like "this took 45 mins to make?".  I know the restaurant was busy and I can empathize but any wait past 30 mins for your food is quite ridiculous.  I'll give credit and say the dish had about 5 very large and firm pieces of scallop which was great but the side of veggies with it was a bit underwhelming considering the wait.

Since it was a birthday, we had to get a dessert (especially since they put giant sparklers in them).  We ended up getting a chocolate lava type cake which was fine but we were all really tired and slightly drunk by that point that we didn't really enjoy it all that much.

Part of me feels bad giving this place a low rating because the food wasn't terrible and our waiter was truly very apologetic but one of my biggest pet peeves is an egregious wait for food with no reparation.  Unless the food is truly outstanding, bad service always leaves a bad taste in my mouth (no pun intended).   If we had gotten our food on time, I probably would have netted out at a 3.5 fork rating anyways.  Total bill with drinks:  $100/pp with tax and tip

Shipwreck Grill Visited 8/27/2016 3.5 Forks

Shipwreck Grill  720 Ashley Ave., Brielle, NJ 08730

Ahh, the Jersey Shore.  It gets a bad rap from the show but if you are lucky enough to have friends who have houses down there, it can be a great weekend get away.  There are some really lovely towns that aren't the GTL crowd.  The great thing about beach towns is that they are usually filled with tons of yummy seafood restaurants.  So this past Saturday night while in Spring Lake, a bunch of us checked out Shipwreck Grill which was close the water and pretty crowded on a Saturday night.  They try to "class" it up a bit by putting a sign out in front saying that they don't allow service to anyone wearing shorts, flip flops, baseball hats, etc but when you're in a beach town, half the population is going to show up in flip flops, so good luck with that.  I guess they were going for a more mature crowd because the demographic here is definitely older and not for the fist pumping crowd. 

The menu here is classic traditional surf and turf fare:  lobster tails, fish, raw bar, and steaks.   As a seafood lover, I was thrilled with the options and had a really hard time deciding between all the fish entrees.  I ended up going for the lobster bisque ($9) to start and Amy and I shared the seared tuna ($28) and the halibut ($35) since we were both deciding between those 2 dishes.  

The lobster bisque was a fairly large sized portion and extremely rich.  It was too heavy handed with the sherry reduction and skimpy on the lobster pieces.  I know it's not a chowder and shouldn't be chunky but it I just felt like I was having a bowl of sherry with a hint of lobster instead of the other way around.  Next time I'll stick with calm chowder instead.  Luckily the fish dishes were better.  I started with the halibut which came with New Zealand green mussels (my favorite!!), potato chunks, pea tendrils, and asparagus all sitting in a light lobster broth.  The halibut was a nice light flakey white fish and was paired nicely with the lobster broth.  I loved the green mussel touch because you don't see them too often and it made me wish they had a whole entree focused around it.  Despite having so many ingredients throw together, the dish was actually very simple but constructed well. Half way through I switched to the seared tuna which was a very classic sesame crusted rare tuna steak served with braised cabbage and pea shoots.  Again, it wasn't anything too complex or sophisticated but it was a very solid and nicely cooked rare piece of tuna.  I would have liked more of the ginger soy glaze on it or perhaps a soy dipping sauce since the edges of the fish were a little dry (I guess I'm just really used to sashimi tuna which is much moister in texture). 

Overall, it was really pleasant adult meal.  While I wouldn't call this a really high end establishment by NYC standards, I can see how they are a bit more upscale than a traditional seafood shack by the water in a beach town where it is ok to roll in with shorts and flip flops.  Total bill:  $99/pp with tax, tip and drinks

Photo Credit:  Yelp 

Brandl Visited 8/24/13 3 Forks

Brandl 703 9th Ave., Belmar, NJ 07719

I have never been to the Jersey Shore before and like most people probably only know about it from the awful MTV show.  So I was never really dying to spend any time where most people spend their days fist pumping.  But when a B-school friend of mine invited me and a bunch of us down to her house in Spring Lake, I was actually pretty excited because it just seemed like something I should do at least once in my life.  I should say that Spring Lake is not the same area where they filmed the show and it was so much nicer and more peaceful than I pictured it.  I was surprised by how much I really liked it down there.  It was a gorgeous and lovely beach town. 

While most of the time we were being lazy bums and tanned by the pool, we did manage to go out to dinner Saturday night.  We had 7:30 reservations at Brandl and we got there about 10 minutes after our designated time but we figured it wouldn't be too big of a deal.  When we checked in with our hostess, she looked like she could really care less that we were there, so that was kind of annoying to deal with.  When she told us that our table wasn't ready yet, we asked how long it would be.  She looked like we had asked her some quantum physics question "I have no idea".  Now, mind you, this was not a huge restaurant and as a hostess I really do expect them to be trained to give an answer to that commonly asked question.  She mentioned that we could sit at the BYOB bar while we waited, which was fine since we had brought 7 bottles of wine with us.  So then we sit at the bar and then proceeded to be ignored for 15 minutes and then finally when they bring us wine glasses, they only brought enough for half of our party.  The hostess finally comes around and tells us that if we want to sit outside, a table will be ready soon.  As a follow-up, we ask how long it would be for a table inside and again, it's a deer caught in headlights look "Ummm, I don't know".  Awesome.  We didn't feel like waiting so we opted for the table outside, but honestly it was not ideal because there was a local band playing outside and it totally drowned out all of our conversations.  When we asked how long they would be playing for...you guessed it, "Uhh, I guess until the sun sets?".  

At this point we were a bit grumpy but doing ok with the wine.  When we did sit down, the waiter totally redeemed the experience from the clueless hostess.  He immediately apologized for the wait and even brought out complimentary calamari as a thank you.  Now that's great customer service.  While it was a nice gesture, the calamari was ok.  It was a bit greasy and the breading wasn't binded to the squid enough, so a few times I would grab a piece and the breading just fell off entirely.  The menu here is mostly seafood since it's located near the beach but it does also have a few delicious sounding chicken, duck, and lamb options.  As a seafood lover, I was torn between scallops, tuna, shrimp or lobster.  I ended up ordering the special salad of the day which was green zebra heirloom tomatoes, pea shoots, goat cheese with thick cuts of bacon and the signature dish of the restaurant the lazy lobster ($35).   The salad was exactly how it was described but I wish it was heavier on the greens instead of the bacon.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I love me some thick cut bacon, but it didn't really feel like much of a salad but rather a bacon dish with some side vegetables sprinkled near it.   Then we waited and waited for our entrees.  Thank god for all the wine we had.  At this point, it was definitely after sunset and the band was still in full gear so clearly they had no idea how long they would be playing for.  Our entrees finally came out and I was very impressed with the presentation of the lazy lobster.  There were huge chunks of the tail and claw and I was ready to dive in.  The dish had a risotto base with bits of asparagus and then it was all poached with vanilla bean butter.  While I did appreciate the large pieces of lobster, I wasn't a huge fan of the vanilla bean flavoring.  It just didn't sit well with a seafood dish and besides that it was lacking any major seasoning.  I could have done with less to no vanilla bean and more dashes of basic salt and pepper.  

At the end of our meal, the waiter brings out 2 of their signatures souffles, again on the house as a thank you for being so patient.  I have to say I've never seen or heard of this level of graciousness before so I do really want to acknowledge that they went out of their way to do right by us.  There was one dark chocolate souffle and another white chocolate version with raspberries.  Even though I'm not a white chocolate person, I really enjoyed the white chocolate one because it had a nice light fruity touch to it and didn't taste like white chocolate at all.  The chocolate one was pretty heavy and more cake-like than souffle like.  All in all,  I really appreciated the effort they made to fix what was initially kind of a crappy welcome.  The food itself was fine but honestly definitely not the caliber of something you'd get in the city (especially at those prices).  Total bill:  $68/pp with tax and tip. 

Photo Credit:  Yelp