Impromptu
We've been watching a lot of Top Chef lately. That show is great because it educates us about what it takes to make great food. The contestants strive for the sublime. The contestant that executes well is favored of the one that comes up with ideas. The winners seem the ones that have a mix between good taste and good kitchen skills. I feel a certain affinity towards chefs because I feel like the game business is a lot like a restaurant. The product feeds and pleases.
Went to Impromptu last night. I felt like the Chef at Impromptu wouldn't have made it to the finals of Top Chef. Both in conceptualization and in execution the dishes were under par. The one redeeming value was that the meats were very well prepared.
A restaurant custumer should be able to pick a random dish from the menu and get something good. A restaurant should have no bad dishes. I picked the wrong dish because it looked intriguing. I do this. A lot. I look at a menu and I pick the thing I havn't seen before. It's a character flaw, at least Leigh thinks so.
At a good restaurant, picking the random dish usually is a safe bet. But at Impromptu it wasn't. It was a stuffed red pepper with black rice and cabbage. It looked interesting on paper. The presentation was so-so and the meat was basically a lamburger crammed into a pepper. My other companions had better luck, Leigh's steak was perfect. The risoto that came with it was ok, I don't think it went with the meat. The spices seem to fight the meat flavor. The meat was so perfect that it seemed like it could have sat alone on the plate and the dish would have been fine. But that's not how things go. The plate was square which didn't help with the presentation. The most successful dish was the Pork Belly.
For an appetizer we had a lamb chop with babaganoush and a gravy. This was quite good, the eggplant spread was light, it counter balanced the rest richness of the gravy and the lamb. The gravy was like a jelly. You'd think that was bad but it wasn't.
I wish Improptu well, because I know there is a good chef back there, but I hope that they tighten up their dishes a little, do some work to refine their really rough edges. Especially at that price, the whole package has too be way above average.
Went to Impromptu last night. I felt like the Chef at Impromptu wouldn't have made it to the finals of Top Chef. Both in conceptualization and in execution the dishes were under par. The one redeeming value was that the meats were very well prepared.
A restaurant custumer should be able to pick a random dish from the menu and get something good. A restaurant should have no bad dishes. I picked the wrong dish because it looked intriguing. I do this. A lot. I look at a menu and I pick the thing I havn't seen before. It's a character flaw, at least Leigh thinks so.
At a good restaurant, picking the random dish usually is a safe bet. But at Impromptu it wasn't. It was a stuffed red pepper with black rice and cabbage. It looked interesting on paper. The presentation was so-so and the meat was basically a lamburger crammed into a pepper. My other companions had better luck, Leigh's steak was perfect. The risoto that came with it was ok, I don't think it went with the meat. The spices seem to fight the meat flavor. The meat was so perfect that it seemed like it could have sat alone on the plate and the dish would have been fine. But that's not how things go. The plate was square which didn't help with the presentation. The most successful dish was the Pork Belly.
For an appetizer we had a lamb chop with babaganoush and a gravy. This was quite good, the eggplant spread was light, it counter balanced the rest richness of the gravy and the lamb. The gravy was like a jelly. You'd think that was bad but it wasn't.
I wish Improptu well, because I know there is a good chef back there, but I hope that they tighten up their dishes a little, do some work to refine their really rough edges. Especially at that price, the whole package has too be way above average.
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