A new restaurant opened up two doors down from my office. It has grand aspirations.
It may well succeed.
I hope it doesn’t.
It’s hard to communicate just whence comes my animus. But I have a few ideas.
One, it’s a fancy Italian restaurant on a busy corner, immediately adjacent to another, preexisting, Italian restaurant. On the side street, off the main drag.
Two, that other Italian restaurant? It’s unprepossessing. One side of its menu is dedicated to pizza, the other to pasta and other Italian starters and mains. Their ingredients are unfailingly, preternaturally fresh. And good. I’ve just never had a better burrata or caprese salad. It’s just so good!
Three, the old place has a small bar, jam-packed with a wide variety of liquor and options at every price point for every spirit. The new place? More seats at the bar, less space for bottles, and a selection that’s confusingly limited. Nothing expensive, nothing cheap. I’m a scotch (or Scotch – I don’t know which I prefer in this context) drinker. An avid Scotch drinker. Not a gourmet, but a gourmand.
This place has literally nothing I ever would order.
When I’m slumming, I drink Black Label. When I’m not, I drink from bottles that run north of $75 retail. This place has exactly five scotches:
– Oban Little Bay, the cheapest, least interesting Oban.
– Aucantoshan, American Oak
– Lagavulin 8 (!) and
– Kilchoman Sanaig (the most expensive, and least good of all those)
I never have it happen that I’m at a bar and see nothing I want.
Or rather, I haven’t until now.
I’ll get to the menu anon, but for now, suffice it to say, this place isn’t aiming at me. I won’t be back.