Usually, we've gone to Cafe 21 for my previous birthdays. This time, it was his turn...
We noticed that their seating area had changed. According to the waitress, they added more seating about four months ago.
Do you see the banquettes with the hexagons? Methinks they came from Zymology, which closed around the same time this past spring. There were lots of hexagonal items here and I'm thinking that since Cafe 21 owned Zymology, they kept some of the fixtures and decor. Pauses to check internet on Zymology's site.....aaaaaaand I'm back. Confirmed. Those banquettes were from there as seen in photos from other blogger sites and that four lettered site.
The outside area now has a long communal table and umbrellas to shade diners.
Although Bert's Birthday meal was "FREE", he let me choose the most expensive thing so that could get comped (the curry seared scallops/$29), while his actual birthday meal was the slow braised short rib ($25). TC ordered the mixed fries (avocado, eggplant, and portobello mushroom) and vegetarian flatbread. For the most part, we shared all of our dishes.
Bert's Moscow mule and TC's grapefruit juice:
My coffee based drink with vodka. I didn't really like this as much but ordered it because the server recommended it over the other coffee/alcohol drink (which had chocolate and Nutella; which might have been better but sadly, that was served warm which I don't like).
Our dinner that Friday evening, which by the way, took a fkg long time to get. One hour and ten minutes to be precise. Maybe only one chef was working that night or something. We saw a couple who arrived after us, get up and leave after waiting and waiting.
The flatbread was served with arugula and had tomatoes, mushrooms and grossly, feta cheese. I made sure to take a bite that didn't have cheese on it.
Bert's short rib with red wine sauce, yam pureer and pea tendrils.
My curry seared scallops (also with pea tendrils), potato leek mash and curry yogurt sauce.
We really liked these fries especially the thick cut mushrooms. The sauces were hummus, tzatziki and what looked like guacmole.
Despite the shitty wait for our food (we did not order appetizers either), when we finally did get our food, we found each and every dish to be delicious and made quite well. It almost made me forget how long we had to wait. Almost. Our server gave us some bread about forty minutes in, which was kind of after the fact. There wasn't any "I'm sorry for the wait" or whatever explanation. The restaurant wasn't packed for a Friday night so maybe they were short a cook or something. For our past visits, we've never had this problem of getting our meal super late.
Previous visit to this location of Cafe 21:
April 2014
Hopefully if we ever do return here for another birthday meal, we won't have to wait an hour.
2 comments:
i feel like i sampled those portabella fries during taste of adams avenue but they weren't that great. more recently, we had some fresh ones at encontro (so did mary) and they were addictive! your remodel comment reminds me of how we went for dennis's birthday in april and the remodel had just finished. i'm seriously lagging on a lot of my posts haha. food blogger woes. =)
Hello Lynn - Those mushroom fries are so good! We also liked the ones at Encontro (I did a post on it as well).
OMG, I am so behind in posts and have been slowly backdating them, ha ha.
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