Sunday, October 18, 2009

Bordinos...an identity crisis.



I'm not really sure what Bordinos is. It's billed as "Fine Dining" and "Italian", but both of these fail to aptly describe this place. I guess if you put a capellini Bolegnaise on your menu you can call yourself Italian. Bordinos is about as Italian as Pizza Hut. And if you the dim the lights in the dining room and serve on linen you can call yourself fine dining.
The biggest problem with Bordinos is that it's is unabashedly resting it's fat "Italian" ass on it's laurels. This place could be so much more, especially at the prices they're charging. Case in point...they're crappy menus. When I'm paying $50 for an entree, I want to read a real friggin menu that is LEATHER BOUND! Not some flacid plastic piece of crap that you'd expect at an Olive Garden.







They say that they have seasonal offerings, but this is far from the truth. The waiter told us about one special that wasn't on the menu, it has butternut squash in it, I guess that qualifies as seasonal.

The meal started with bread and olive oil, the foccacia is really good, and they make all their breads on premises each day, which is cool. The other breads aren't really savory enough to enjoy with olive oil.


We got the cheese board as an app, thank god you can't screw up cheese on a plate!











I had the Caesar salad, it was pretty good as a Ceasar salad goes. A little fishy...the original Caesar doesn't contain anchovies. It could have used a bit more garlic, but seasoned well on the whole. The croutons seemed to be made in house as well.







The Ceasar was followed by a port pate with cherry compote and frisee salad. Everybody loves pork and pork fat these days, so surprise surprise they have a fatty pork dish...very original. The dish was well thought out, strong conceptually, they need to work on it technically though. The pork pate was actually a head cheese made from the pigs head. It was pretty good, but it was a little crunchy, it needed to be cooked a bit more to soften all the cartilage and connective tissue. I'm sure that dish cost pennies to make, pigs head aren't exactly a choice cut. The cherry compote was a nice sweet and tart pallet cleansing counterpoint to the pork's rich unctious savory qualities. The frisee salad was under seasoned, but also had a nice bitterness that played well against the pork.


My girlfriend had the capellini with beef tenderloin meat balls, it was pretty good. The pasta was well sauced, and cooked properly. The meatballs were a little salty, but had a nice crispy texture on the outside, they must have breaded them and pan fried them before plating.








A friend had the chocolate cake, it was super rich and dense, had a bittersweet thing going on, pretty good.
The most bothersome thing about Bordinos is that it definitely has the potential to be so much better. It's a a nice place to take a date or a birthday dinner, but they definitely need to improve their food!

No comments:

Post a Comment