We went to Razzle Dazzle last night for dinner and we both weren't completely Razzle Dazzled.
This is a primarily vegan and vegetarian restaurant, although they do have what they call "naughty" dishes which are for carnivores such as steak, chicken and pork. We were both very excited for try the vegetarian dishes.
We tried two of the signature cocktails. First was a Popcorn Old F ashioned. Is it a drink or a snack? Why can't it be both? The addition of some fig provided a buttery note and the popcorn had been dusted with kettle corn powder.
The other cocktail was called Freshly Picked and was a twist on a mojito with the addition of basil and cilantro.
The best dish of the night was not surprisingly the mushroom tartar. This was a delicious combination of finely chopped mushrooms in a tarragon vinegrette.
Some good mushroomy (yes - it is a word) flavor. It also had a delicious pesto and was topped with thin radishes, micro greens and edible flowers. A winning dish.
The Cobb salad was very tasty having a dressing that was closer to a Caesar.
Along with the expected chicken, bacon and blue cheese was some Al dente asparagus, red onion, creamy avocado and inventive hard boiled egg that had been stained with beet juice. That was a first for me. The only flaw for me was there was simply too much red onion - or this variety was too pungent so it took over the salad.
The ginger beer chicken had a great sauce, almost like a General Tso, but not as much heat.
The issue was that the chicken thigh had been cooked too long as and was dry. The green beans were very flavorful and cooke Al dente.
The least favorite dish was the roasted cauliflower.
While this had some terrific seasoning of curry, sesame seeds, pistachios and pomegranate, it was all wasted since the cauliflower was served practically raw. We really needed a steak knife to cut it. Eating a huge head of raw cauliflower was not pleasant. An example of a well designed dish that was poorly executed. Would have been much better if the cauliflower was cut into steaks. Roasting this large a piece should have taken 30 minutes or more and it obviously hadn't been cooked long enough.
The shishito peppers were tasty with a good amount of salt.
As it goes with these peppers, it is a roll of the dice to see whether the one you eat will be mild or hot. Usually it is rare to have a lot of hot ones but this was a special batch. Tasty but we could only eat so many.
The squash ravioli was a tasty dish. And it had roasted chestnuts to add some additional sweetness and a bit of texture.
The big surprise of the night was some fantastic desserts starting with a vegan, vegetarian and gluten free blueberry green tea cheesecake.
This had such a great cream cheese texture and flavor - but it had no cream cheese. Also a wonderful crust. And there was also a bit of lemon "cream" to balance the sweetness.
The Razzle Cake (not vegetarian or gluten free) was everything you want in a chocolate cake. Moist and flavorful with a creamy caramel icing.
At first I wasn't a fan of the rainbow churros since they weren't warm.
But then I had the ubo ice cream. This was so creamy and delicious - and vegetarian. As we learned from our server (and enhanced with an interweb search), ubo is a phillipino ice cream made predominantly from purple yams. It had such a great ice cream texture and had a flavor close to black raspberry.
So we had a very good ending to a rather undazziling meal. Perhaps we had too high of expectations. Really a shame to see poor execution impact some dishes that have some real thought behind them.
No comments:
Post a Comment