I wouldn’t normally post this here – I typically reserve this space for information about writing, online marketing, etc. – but I attended a food event last night that I really wanted to review, and the other venues for this type of review don’t provide enough space. So unless you’re interested in food events, or my writing relative to a review, feel free to move on to my other articles. If you’re a potential client and you do read this, keep in mind that this is written in an informal, casual style that isn’t consistent with my professional writing.
Review: Chef Louie Night, April 11, 2010, Boston
So here’s the thing: I went into this event wanting to love it. I’m a huge Iron Chef fan, and I loved the idea of an event that’s somewhere between Iron Chef and Dinner: Impossible. I actually had tickets to the last Chef Louie event in 2008, but ended up being unable to go at the last minute, so I was even more psyched about attending this one.
The reality? Alas, vaguely disappointing.
I don’t want to minimize all of the hard work that clearly went into this event. It’s an amazing feat to show up day-of and work out a menu, cook for 200 people, and get it all out to the diners. I think it must have been an awesome effort, but the results were underwhelming.
Doors were scheduled to be at 6 and sit-down dinner portion starting at 7. We showed up at 6:30 exactly and the line to get in was out the door. The space itself seemed way small to accommodate 175 attendees. The area where the tables were located was blocked off, so all 175 people were crammed into a small area in front of the bar. Which was nearly impossible to reach, because of all of the people. And when I did get to the bar, the poor bartenders were running ragged trying to serve 175 people in the 60 minutes during which the ‘complementary drink’ ticket was valid. I did manage to get a drink around 6:50, which someone immediately almost spilled all over me because the space was so small and they were trying to cram by me.
Drink selection: sad. None of the mixed drinks were quite my thing, and I took one because it was complementary, but I was disappointed that I couldn’t get a mixed drink that I liked better. I know they were going for a theme, but let me just say that Chez Henri does drinks that would fit with their theme and they’re SO MUCH better than the drinks available at this event. So it’s possible to come up with ‘good’ drinks that work with the theme they were trying to hit. They just didn’t quite make it. (Also? Drink selection for a cash bar was way small. My gf wanted a decent beer, because she’s not like me and willing to drink whatever liquor is available, but they only had one beer choice and it was a poor one. Wine? Also mediocre – I tried hers and it was clearly cheap wine. Not consistent with the event price/venue.)
Seating didn’t actually happen until around 7:20, at which point my comfort level increased drastically because there weren’t 175 people trying to cram into a tiny space in front of the bar. As we were making our way to our table, we passed a boat filled with ice that looked like it must have held something at some point (oysters? I believe the event was sponsored by an oyster company) but we had no idea it was there during the cocktail hour, because we could barely move in the press of the crowd.
Found our seats, and I decided to try for another cocktail before dinner was served because I didn’t want to get up during the meal to get drinks. The bar was *much* less crowded at that point, and it actually only took me like 7-10 minutes to get served, instead of the 20+ it had taken earlier. (And yes, I know the bar staff was crazy busy and they were very pleasant, but I suggest that perhaps they should have had more than 2 bartenders trying to serve 175 people simultaneously.)
Alas, when I returned to my table and sat down my cocktail, I discovered that the exact spot where I sat it was where they’d shoved two tables together, and it wasn’t even. So over goes the cocktail, all over the tablecloth, and my glass of water also got dumped in an attempt to save the cocktail. There went my $8 mediocre drink, and the water apparently dripped between the tables onto the poor ladies seated across from us. We managed to get the attention of one of the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts students who was helping with the event, and she was super awesome and efficient about providing cloth napkins over the tablecloths to absorb some of the moisture. But the drink? Just gone, because no-one thought it would be a bad idea to match up uneven tables and then cover it up with tablecloths so you wouldn’t know until you sat a drink down that it was going to fall over.
Then the food started to arrive. I was willing to forgive the cramming 175 people into a tiny space, and even the poor drink selection, for the food. The food was why I had gone, after all, and as a foodie, I was psyched to see what creations the chef would unveil. First course was a dinner salad with prosciutto and strawberries that was quite tasty and refreshing, chicken wings that had a nice flavor, and pulled pork and sausage served with lettuce leaves.
The salad was fantastic. The ingredients were fresh and juicy, and the vinaigrette complemented the flavor well. Unfortunately, we got one salad dish for our entire table – 18 people – and I only got a few bites of the salad. Would have loved more of the salad, and I think given the size of the table and the amount of the salad, there should have been at least two salad dishes on our table. It was demolished, and I wanted more but there was no more to be had.
The chicken wings had a good flavor, but this is another case of there not being enough food on our table. We got one small-ish round serving dish with wings, that went to the other end of the table, and was slowly circulated around the table. By the time it got to our end of the table, there were only a few wings left, and I could only have one. After tasting, I would have liked another, but there were simply no more to be had. I think we should have gotten two of those, as well.
The pulled pork with sausage and lettuce leaves was delicious. This was probably the highlight of the meal for me. The flavors were great – the pork was very fresh, and the flavors they chose complemented one another well. The lettuce leaves were great, because they added a textural contrast and a light, refreshing flavor to the dish. This was really well done, balanced dish.
Unfortunately, they served this in a gigantic serving dish that was extremely heavy and unweildy, and did not lend itself well to being passed down the table. Two smaller dishes would have been far preferable for our table – it took us a while to get the pork once it was on the table, and there was the constant fear of dropping it when we passed it because it was so heavy. In the end, the final resting place for the pork was out of our reach, and so we couldn’t get more if we’d wanted it. Although I noted that when the servers took this serving platter away, it still contained food – unlike the chicken and the salad dishes. Not well-balanced in terms of quantities at our table.
The Cambridge School of Culinary Arts students who were helping out cleared some of the used dinnerware, but not all of it. Some people still had dirty plates, and some people had their utensils taken away and weren’t given fresh ones. This still hadn’t been corrected by the time they served the second course, and my date had to flag down a server to get the situation corrected.
The second course, alas, was forgettable. There was a Farro dish that I quite liked, except that there were only a few sunchokes and there wasn’t enough to go around at our table, as usual. There were small sandwiches with a spicy mayo that I feel turned out to be a complete fail. I just didn’t like the flavor profile at all. There was too much bread, proportionally, for the amount of filling, and the flavors didn’t really complement one another well. Also, it contained an uncooked carrot slice, which made it difficult to eat.
There was a potato hash that was kind of tasty, although it was a bit unevenly cooked – some of the potato was mushy, and some of it was undercooked. It was cooked with pork (bacon) but the flavor was unmemorable. I have better potato hash at Sunday brunches.
The highlight of this course was sliced pork loin served in some brothey bowl with some sort of greens and apparently some other vegetables. Unfortunately, this was also a major area of logistics fail. This was also served in a huge serving dish, and was extremely hot and liquidey. Which means that our table-mates were not going to pass it. All 18 people at the table had to pass their plates down individually to the people sitting in front of the dish, who had to serve us. We had no control over what was placed on our dish – I didn’t even know there were other vegetables (carrots, Fava beans, and peas) in the dish until my date pointed them out in her serving. I didn’t get any at all in my portion.
We ate this on plates and were served with essentially tongs, so there was no way for us to get any of the broth that I assume was a highlight of this dish. Essentially, I got a piece of pork loin with some limp green stuff on top. The pork loin was tasty – the pork was obviously fresh and high-quality – but unmemorable. There was nothing about the flavor to make the pork loin stand out compared to a thousand other pieces of pork. If it was the balance of flavors in the dish that was supposed to make this stand out, I didn’t get that nuance, since I didn’t get most of the flavors in the dish. It was disappointing.
Eventually, the servers cleared away the dishes for this course, too, and then we all sat around waiting for a while. I think everyone was expecting more, because no-one got up from the tables and we were probably sitting for 15+ minutes after they cleared the plates away. Finally, the kitchen staff came out to stand on the stairs at the back of the venue, and there was a little speech thanking people, etc. and apparently that was the end of the event. We had been promised dessert at the beginning of the meal, but it appeared that dessert was not forthcoming. We were chatting about this when one of the event staff overheard us and told us that we were supposed to proceed to the bar area, where we’d get dessert passed around.
No interest in that whatsoever. After being crammed into the bar area before with 175 people for around 45-50 minutes, I had no desire to deal with that again. My date and I finished our drinks, and then ducked into the adjacent hotel so I could use the bathroom. When we walked by the venue, it looked like the dessert was just being served – probably 30 minutes after the end of the meal, and 15-ish minutes after they informed us that we were supposed to go to the bar area for dessert.
One final disappointment with the event: part of the draw to an event like this is “audience gets to pick the ingredients, and the chef has to work with what the audience picks to create a meal.” It just didn’t work that way. In two cases, the audience selected a specific ingredient that the chef didn’t like, so he substituted another ingredient. I understand the need to create a well-balanced menu with flavors that complement one another well, but if you’re not prepared to use the ingredients – don’t offer the choice of those ingredients in the ‘voting.’ I felt this wasn’t true to the spirit of the event.
On the whole: I probably wouldn’t do this again. The concept is fun, but it wasn’t well implemented. The serving logistics were a real problem, as were the logistics of cramming 175 people into a space that simply could not comfortably accommodate them. The first course was quite tasty, but the second course was unmemorable, and I can make no comment on dessert. I have no problems paying $60 for dinner (the cost after admission and two drinks, since my first drink got dumped on the table) but this was simply not a $60 dinner, nor did the experience warrant the cost. I’m sorry, Louie – I really wanted to like this event, but it simply wasn’t quite where I’d want it to be for this cost/venue.
The next time I want to go out for a nice date night, I’ll take my $60 to a decent restaurant and enjoy the meal *and* the dining experience.
