Yesterday was our first wedding anniversary and we went to St. Louis and stayed at Embassy Suites for the occasion. As I am not a huge fan of St. Louis, we opted to eat at the hotel restaurant, Cyprus Grille, rather than try to find a nice restaurant elsewhere. We both dressed up and I was under the impression that it was going to be pretty fancy.
First off, the menu was small. The appetizer selection was acceptable but the entree list was tiny. They only had two steak options, one of which was KC strip (as part of a surf-and-turf with jumbo shrimp scampi), and the other was flat iron. No ribeye, no sirloin even. There was a "sandwiches and pasta" section of the menu, with exactly one pasta dish in it, which was inexplicably not available after 5 PM.
Alex ended up getting the surf-and-turf (come to think of it, isn't surf-and-turf generally steak and lobster?), which came with seasonal vegetables and garlic mashed potatoes, and I got grilled chicken in a sage cream sauce, with garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus. I also ordered a glass of Chateau Ste. Michelle riesling (my favorite white wine), and a bowl of French onion soup, because I had actually never had it before.
Service was SLOW. It was a Saturday night at like 7 PM, and we were one of maybe 5 couples there (there were 20-25 tables it looked like). There is no reason it should have been that slow. It took nearly 30 minutes for my soup to even arrive. The first thing I noticed about the soup was that the green onion garnish had been chopped unevenly. This is not something I would previously have noticed, but I seem to have turned into a bit of a food snob. The soup itself was decent-tasting (though all the onions had sunk to the bottom, and the crouton was soggy... not sure if that's normal for French onion soup or not).
The rest of the meal arrived approximately 10 minutes after the soup. The chicken tasted okay but there were TWO breasts, pounded flat. I've never ordered anything in my life that came with two chicken breasts before (outside of like KFC). Also the asparagus, while cooked to an acceptable level of tenderness, had no seasoning at all on it. It could have at least done with some salt. It tasted boiled or steamed; roasting it would have helped tremendously. Also the stalks were very very thick, almost too thick.
Alex said his steak was overcooked (he ordered medium rare and it looked closer to medium or medium well to me) and chewy (owing to the cut of the steak). Also the scampi came lying on top of the steak, as opposed to in a saucer of garlic butter like all previous shrimp scampi I've seen. (He said they were good though.) Also his entire dish inexplicably had mint sprinkled all over everything. I have never seen that before, and I tried it for myself, it WAS mint. The only thing I can guess is that it was supposed to be parsley or cilantro and somebody in the kitchen got confused.
Final tab was $75. I threw in a 10% tip, because while the service wasn't HOSTILE, it was very very slow and unprofessional. (Also I was a bit perturbed coming into dinner because we had gone to the free alcohol reception, and I ordered a vodka-and-Sprite which tasted like a vodka-and-club-soda. Yuck.)
The next morning/noon we went to Denny's; I got a Super Bird and Alex got a BLT with extra bacon, and I must say, it was far more satisfying than Cyprus Grille. I was almost inclined to go back and tell them so, but we had already checked out by that point and I'm not really that evil.
Showing posts with label restaurant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restaurant. Show all posts
Monday, October 22, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Sushi Gin
(A couple of nights ago there would have been a Brussels Sprouts au Gratin recipe here, but several video card driver crashes plus driver-upgrading reboots took up so much time that it didn't get posted. Let me just say the following things about the gratin: 1) needs less Dijon, since both Dijon mustard and wasabi taste like rubbing alcohol to me, 2) needs more sauce, 3) otherwise good.)
Alex had a pretty crappy day at work today, so I suggested we go out for dinner tonight, and he selected Sushi Gin. Neither of us had ever been there, and I would have suggested we go to our usual Japanese spot of Shogun but Shogun has hibachi, whereas it appeared Sushi Gin didn't, and neither of us was in a hibachi mood. Plus it's always nice to try new things, and I had been looking for a local (ie, not KC MO) non-hibachi Japanese restaurant.
We sat down on booth seating, with Pier One seat pads. While this isn't exactly traditional (as far as I know), it was for me much more comfortable than the crawling-under-the-table-no-shoes thing, which is kind of hard to get in and out of. Alex ordered hot sake and I ordered Coke (bad me!), and as for our orders, we got an appetizer of edamame, and I ordered shrimp/veg tempura with salad, and Alex got a sushi selection with miso soup.
Well, the soups came. I say plural because for some reason they gave me miso soup instead of salad. I had only had miso soup once before and I always liked the scallion broth soup better but they didn't have that here, and the miso was okay. Kinda wanted to try their salad dressing though, but oh well.
Then the edamame arrived, which was nicely de-fuzzed (the last batch of edamame we got from Shogun appeared to have all its fuzz still on), and then our actual dishes. Alex was quite pleased with his sushi, particularly the unagi and big-eye tuna (this was a special item which was not on the menu and so I don't know what the Japanese name for it is). The tempura was more filling than I had expected it to be (the Coke probably didn't help with this), and ultimately a bit underwhelming. I had specifically ordered it because I had never had vegetable tempura before, and I think I expected it to have more flavor. Even with the sauce, it mostly tasted like plain seasoningless cooked vegetables (broccoli, onion ring, mushroom, sweet potato, red bell pepper, green bell pepper, and asparagus) in a crispy batter. I think shrimp in and of itself probably had more flavor, which is why I like shrimp tempura better. Anyway, I filled up so quick that I ended up leaving the mushroom, half the onion ring, sweet potato, and 2 (out of 4) shrimp to Alex. Then he had green tea ice cream (his favorite) and i had oddly orange-colored vanilla ice cream. I swear, I thought it was mango, which is usually the non-green tea option, and I don't like mango ice cream all that much so I was going to be pissed if they had screwed up my dessert too. It was vanilla though, and a bit underflavored and overly-frozen (ice crystals). I think I've spoiled myself by snacking on Haagen Dazs extra rich light vanilla bean ice cream lately, but damn if that isn't delicious.
Ultimately though, it was only $49 plus tip, and Alex was so very pleased with the sushi (and the menu... I should have gotten udon instead, dammit!) that I'm sure we'll go back. It's a nice, more casual, closer option to Kabuki, which is difficult to get to because it's downtown and downtown is evil.
Alex had a pretty crappy day at work today, so I suggested we go out for dinner tonight, and he selected Sushi Gin. Neither of us had ever been there, and I would have suggested we go to our usual Japanese spot of Shogun but Shogun has hibachi, whereas it appeared Sushi Gin didn't, and neither of us was in a hibachi mood. Plus it's always nice to try new things, and I had been looking for a local (ie, not KC MO) non-hibachi Japanese restaurant.
We sat down on booth seating, with Pier One seat pads. While this isn't exactly traditional (as far as I know), it was for me much more comfortable than the crawling-under-the-table-no-shoes thing, which is kind of hard to get in and out of. Alex ordered hot sake and I ordered Coke (bad me!), and as for our orders, we got an appetizer of edamame, and I ordered shrimp/veg tempura with salad, and Alex got a sushi selection with miso soup.
Well, the soups came. I say plural because for some reason they gave me miso soup instead of salad. I had only had miso soup once before and I always liked the scallion broth soup better but they didn't have that here, and the miso was okay. Kinda wanted to try their salad dressing though, but oh well.
Then the edamame arrived, which was nicely de-fuzzed (the last batch of edamame we got from Shogun appeared to have all its fuzz still on), and then our actual dishes. Alex was quite pleased with his sushi, particularly the unagi and big-eye tuna (this was a special item which was not on the menu and so I don't know what the Japanese name for it is). The tempura was more filling than I had expected it to be (the Coke probably didn't help with this), and ultimately a bit underwhelming. I had specifically ordered it because I had never had vegetable tempura before, and I think I expected it to have more flavor. Even with the sauce, it mostly tasted like plain seasoningless cooked vegetables (broccoli, onion ring, mushroom, sweet potato, red bell pepper, green bell pepper, and asparagus) in a crispy batter. I think shrimp in and of itself probably had more flavor, which is why I like shrimp tempura better. Anyway, I filled up so quick that I ended up leaving the mushroom, half the onion ring, sweet potato, and 2 (out of 4) shrimp to Alex. Then he had green tea ice cream (his favorite) and i had oddly orange-colored vanilla ice cream. I swear, I thought it was mango, which is usually the non-green tea option, and I don't like mango ice cream all that much so I was going to be pissed if they had screwed up my dessert too. It was vanilla though, and a bit underflavored and overly-frozen (ice crystals). I think I've spoiled myself by snacking on Haagen Dazs extra rich light vanilla bean ice cream lately, but damn if that isn't delicious.
Ultimately though, it was only $49 plus tip, and Alex was so very pleased with the sushi (and the menu... I should have gotten udon instead, dammit!) that I'm sure we'll go back. It's a nice, more casual, closer option to Kabuki, which is difficult to get to because it's downtown and downtown is evil.
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