(由 Google 翻译)哎呀!这家餐厅真是太糟糕了。
我们花了510美元请两位客人点了波利尼西亚之夜的特别菜单,这绝对是我吃过的最不划算的饭菜了。每种文化都被完全曲解了,而且没有一种创新或令人难忘的味道。
六道毫无创意(几乎无法下咽)的菜肴搭配六杯满满的鸡尾酒,全都甜得过头,而且口感不均衡。我不知道他们的目的是想让我们醉到感觉不到食物的平庸,还是为了证明250美元的价格物有所值,但考虑到我们在周二晚上一个半小时内喝下这么多糖和酒精,这实在是太夸张了。你面前只能放两杯酒,所以如果你不能以每15分钟一杯老式鸡尾酒的速度喝完,就会被取消。
厨师们显然希望我们对波利尼西亚美食一无所知,甚至连基本的食材都不懂,因为他们一直在欺骗我们食材的名称和真伪。
这道菜的开胃菜是一条不知名的白鱼,浸泡在味道单一的椰奶汤里。这道菜分量太大,口感毫无对比,用勺子吃起来像喝汤一样?奇怪的甜味“汤”被更甜的ube鸡尾酒盖过了。
下一道菜又是一道做得很差的酸橘汁腌鱼式菜肴。Lomi lomi,一道传统的夏威夷菜,通常类似于用pico de gallo蘸三文鱼吃的蘸酱,口感简直是一场噩梦。帝王鲑鱼又粉又软,像是老了,在青柠汁里腌了太久,破坏了鱼肉的完整性。据说上面撒了微量的香菜(其实是成熟的香菜)、番茄酱(就是用油慢炖的番茄,这分明就是腌制好的生樱桃番茄)和毛伊洋葱(我们拿到的红洋葱切得很差……毛伊洋葱是黄色的)。芝麻油的味道盖过了主味,我们被告知这是“传统的夏威夷风味”。我超爱芝麻油,但lomi lomi里连芝麻都没有。也许他们想到的是金枪鱼波奇???
五花肉尝起来有罐装海鲜酱的味道,完全没有五花肉应有的品质……没有酥脆的皮,没有入口即化的肥肉,也没有入口即化的嫩肉。
简单的冷烤虾配一份很普通的木瓜沙拉算是比较不错的菜之一——至少它有咸味来中和糖分。和牛炒饭不错……这次的蒜蓉油封是货真价实的油封,和牛远谈不上顶级(缺乏大理石纹),而且在烤灯下烤了一段时间(煎蛋凝固了,肉的切面也干了),但至少味道更均衡,即使自从十年前辣椒脆片流行以来,我已经吃过这道菜十几次了。
甜点不错。Halo halo 口感丰富,味道鲜美,但当我试图看菜单,想看看最下面的椰子蛋糕是什么时,我的心又沉了下去,因为我看到它应该是果馅饼……这既没有果馅饼的口感,也没有果馅饼的味道。
服务员还不错,但我们坐在厨师“品尝桌”的最末端,感觉像是事后才想到的。一个厚厚的玻璃展示柜里放着干巴巴的(这应该是北京烤鸭吗??)鸭子,挡在我们和厨房之间。我们几乎听不到任何菜品描述,当然也看不到菜品的制作过程。厨师甚至没能伸手递菜给我们,所以在其他6位客人都得到了厨师的亲自服务后,我们才被单独服务。这远非我所期望的服务水平,毕竟还要自动支付20%的小费(小费在计算税费之前就加进去了,所以我们还要支付20%服务费的税费🤯)。
每人255美元,请假设你的客人对食物足够了解,知道他们什么时候被骗了菜谱和食材的真实性。250美元正好是我上次去夏威夷的往返机票的花费。
对我们来说已经太晚了,但如果我能至少拯救一位食客的钱包和胃,让他们避免再次遭遇类似的糟糕体验,那我的用餐体验就不算白费了。
(原文)
Ooooof. This place was a huge miss.
We spent $510 for 2 people on the special Polynesian night menu, and it was easily the worst value for money I have ever spent on a meal. Each culture was entirely misrepresented, and not a single innovative or memorable flavor.
Six uninspired (bordering on inedible) dishes were served with six FULL cocktails, all overbearingly sweet and unbalanced. I’m not sure if their goal was to get us so drunk that we wouldn’t notice how mediocre the food was, or if it was to justify the $250 price tag, but that is a wild amount of sugar and alcohol to expect us to consume in 1.5 hours on a Tuesday night. You can only have 2 drinks in front of you, so if you couldn’t drink at a rate of 1 old fashion per 15 minutes, it was taken away.
Chefs were clearly hoping we lacked any knowledge of Polynesian food, or even basic ingredients for that matter, as we were consistently lied to about the name and authenticity of the ingredients.
It started with an unknown white fish swimming in one-note coconut broth. Too large a portion with no textural contrast whatsoever, with a spoon to eat the ceviche like a soup? The odd sweet “broth” was overpowered by an even sweeter ube cocktail.
The next dish was yet another poorly executed ceviche-style dish. Lomi lomi, a traditional Hawaiian dish that usually resembles a pico de gallo dip with salmon, was a textural nightmare. King salmon was mealy and mushy, as if it was old and had been marinating in lime juice for far too long, ruining the integrity of the flesh. We were told it was topped with micro cilantro (it was mature cilantro), tomato confit (which is tomato slow cooked in fat, this was clearly just a marinated raw cherry tomato), and Maui onion (we got a very poorly cut red onion…Maui onions are yellow). Sesame oil was above and behind the dominating flavor, which we were told this was the “traditional Hawaiian style”. I LOVE sesame oil, but lomi lomi doesn’t even have sesame in it. Maybe they were thinking of tuna poke???
Pork belly tasted of jarred hoisin sauce, and lacked any of the qualities you seek out in pork belly…no crispy skin, no melt-in-the-mouth rendered fat, no fall-apart tender meat.
Basic cold grilled shrimp with a very average papaya salad was one of the better dishes - at least it had a savory component to cut through all the sugar. Fried rice with wagyu was good….garlic confit was an actual confit this time, wagyu was far from top grade (lack of marbling) and had been sitting under a heat lamp for a bit (congealed fried egg, cut surface of meat dried out), but at least the flavors were more balanced, even if I have eaten this exact same dish a dozen times since chili crisp first went into style ten years ago.
Dessert was good. Halo halo had texture and flavor, but when I tried to decipher the menu to see what the coconut cake was at the bottom, my heart sank once again when I saw that it was supposed to be flan…this had neither the texture nor flavor of flan.
Servers were nice enough, but we were sat at the very end of the chefs “tasting table” and treated as an afterthought. A thick glass display case of dried out (was this supposed to be Peking??) duck acted as barrier between us and the kitchen. We could hardly hear any of the dishes being described to us, and we certainly could not see them being prepared. The chef couldn’t even reach us to hand us dishes, so we were served separately after the other 6 guests were served personally by the chef. Far from the level of service I would expect for an automatic 20% gratuity (which is added prior to calculating tax so we also pay the tax for the 20% service charge 🤯).
For $255 per person, please assume your guests understand food well enough to know when they are being lied to about the authenticity of the recipes and ingredients. $250 was literally how much I spent on my last round trip plane ticket to Hawaii.
It is too late for us, but if I can save at least one diner’s wallet and stomach from a similarly disappointing experience, then I will not have dined in vain.