When you sit at the table, each person gets their own mini bread basket which I appreciate as a carb-o-holic. It has an olive roll, popover of some sort, mini baguette, and some scattered raw vegetables in the basket. I also love olives, so whenever a restaurant serves olive rolls I am sold, and their's did not disappoint. It is hard to control myself when presented with that many bread options, but I only allowed myself to eat the olive roll since I had to save room for the other courses.
What I love about the David Burke restaurants is that they pretty much offer their whole menu (with the exception of a few dishes that require supplements) as part of restaurant week, as opposed to just 2 or 3 select dishes for each course like most other restaurants. This gives you a lot of great options to choose from and you don't feel limited by the menu. For the appetizer, I chose the beet salad that came with some goat cheese, and my sister got the tomato gazpacho with crab meat and avocado.
I really enjoyed the beet salad, as it was very light and fresh. I mean, it is pretty hard to go wrong with a beet salad since it is basically just roasted beets, lettuce and a light dressing, but I enjoyed the dish. My sister also really liked her gazpacho as it was a very light appetizer with great flavor.
For the main course, I was super excited about the chicken dish. It was crispy chicken "under a salt brick," (which i'm assuming is just how it was cooked) and it came with broccolini and truffle mac and cheese. I generally always order chicken, but the truffle mac and cheese was the selling point for me.
The chicken on its own was pretty ordinary, since it did not come with any sauce or anything, but the sides made me love the dish. The truffle mac and cheese was super creamy and cheesy, and seeing that I never really eat mac and cheese I appreciated it that much more. The broccolini was also delicious, and was grilled really nicely. I was expecting the dish to come with a small side of the mac and cheese, but they give you a HUGE serving of it. While it was hard to control myself, I wouldn't allow myself to eat all of it. To me, the standouts of the dish were the truffle mac and cheese and the broccolini, and the chicken was just a side note. My sister got the scallops, and was a bit disappointed. She is not good with spice, and the dish had a lot of red pepper flakes on it so she was struggling with the spice level. It also came with just 2 1/2 scallops, which is a very small portion even for a fancy restaurant.
For dessert, I got the chocolate caramel bar and my sister got the passion fruit trifle. The chocolate caramel bar was really chocolatey and delicious. It wasn't too large, so I didn't feel too guilty about eating the whole thing, and it was mainly mousse so it felt very light and fluffy. What I didn't like so much was the side of earl grey ice cream that it came with. It seemed like a very strange combination and it had a weird taste to it. The good part was that it stopped me from eating the ice cream, but I was a little disappointed with the flavor choice. I also didn't really notice any caramel except for the sauce decoration on the plate, but it was still really good. My sister really enjoyed her passion fruit trifle, and compared it to a deconstructed macaron.
Overall, I really enjoyed my food. My sister was disappointed with her scallops dish and said that this was probably her least favorite visit, but she would still return. I would also be doing everyone a disservice if I did not comment on their poor service. After we sat down, they took our order pretty quickly and the waiter made it seem like they were going to be swamped, so I figured that our food would come out very quickly. The appetizers came out super quick, probably within 5-10 minutes of ordering. Then, there was at least a 30 minute lag time between when they cleared our plates and when they brought the main course. I normally wouldn't mind waiting a little for the main course, but I would've rather the appetizer come out later so that there wasn't as much wait time between courses. Also, between our appetizer and main course our original waiter disappeared and someone else took over the area where we were sitting, and he never came over to let us know that a switch was being made. While we were eating the main course, not once did the waiter come over to ask how the food was, which seemed a little strange to me since this is such a nice restaurant. After the main course, we again had a bit of a wait until the desserts came out. In fact, the table next to us (who ordered after us and had all of their dishes come out after us) got their dessert about 5-10 minutes before us. Once the desserts came to the table, again no one came over to see if everything was good. Then, when I asked for the check, it was to a third waitress who had taken over the area where we were sitting yet again.
Since we had been here before, we remembered that you get a little box of chocolates with the check, and I even saw that the table next to us got them. However, when they brought us the check we did not get anything. When my sister asked, the waitress said she had to go check, which seemed very odd since everyone else had gotten them.
I understand that things tend to get hectic during restaurant week, but that doesn't really excuse poor service in a restaurant of this caliber. The service we received at our past visits was far superior, so I can only take it to mean that this visit was a fluke. Since it is our annual tradition to go to David Burke Townhouse during restaurant week, I'm sure we will return (especially since I really like the food as well), but we were just a little disappointed with our experience during this visit.
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