I have mixed feelings on restaurant week. In theory, it’s the best thing that could happen to a foodie with a limited budget in NYC. For those unfamiliar, Rest Week is a biannual event where restaurants offer 3-course prix fixe menus, $25 for lunch and $35 for dinner. It helps promote the businesses by drawing in new customers, exposing them to their food and hopefully inspiring them to return. For the eaters, they get to explore places that would normally be outside their budget or general preferences.
In actuality, most of the highest end places (Craft, Daniel’s, etc.) either don’t participate or only offer the deal during lunchtime, when most people cannot take an hour and a half-two hours to go eat a gourmet 3-course lunch. And the restaurants that do offer dinners have such abbreviated and disappointing menus that you almost don’t want to bother ordering off of them! Of course this is their plan, as you’ll end up spending more if you order off the regular menu. A standard rest week menu included a soup, a salad, and one other appetizer for the first course, a salmon dish, roast chicken dish, and one other entrée, and then three desserts – but never their specialties. So picking your rest week destinations is somewhat of a crapshoot: some have good menus, some will leave you feeling cheated.
Cheated is exactly how I felt with my first rest week outing of the season. It happened to be my good friend’s bday so I booked a reservation for four of us at The Water Club, located literally ON the east river, with gorgeous views out of their floor-ceiling windows. The vibe is very old-money-yachting-club. I half expected to see men puffing on cigars and sipping brandy in the lobby, despite the smoking ban in NYC. It is difficult to find, and even harder to walk to. Situated on the other side of the FDR on 30th at the river, you have to either walk down 34th or 23rd to cross over to the service road that leads to the restaurant. There is nothing else in the vicinity – you’re never going to wander by and think “oh! Let’s eat there!” This would seem to make rest week a perfect opportunity for the Water Club to entice a new breed of patrons. Too bad they blew it.
Things first started going downhill when we were seated. I has specifically made the resercation for a window table, and reconfirmed the request the day before. They had said “no problem.” When the host walked us to an inside table, I mentioned the request, and he told me that he could put us on the list but that it would be another half hour wait. Funny thing was, there was an open 4-top at the window! When I pointed it out he responded that “oh no, that table is reserved.” WHAT? Apparently Water Club is precisely a club, and we were not members. This outsider status became even clearer as the evening went on and service became less and less acceptable.
The rest week options were of the disappointing variety I mentioned earlier but even worse – there were only TWO options for each course. A cold leek and potato soup and a simple salad for apps, a salmon and braised beef dishes for entrées and a summer berry pudding or chocolate mocha layer cake for dessert. Now I don’t eat meat, and I don’t like salmon, so I was kind of screwed. One of my friends is a vegetarian, and they were unwilling to accomodate her on the rest week menu. She had expected this and ended up ordering the “mixed vegetable” platter, the restaurant’s only concession to vegetarians. My other two friends orderded from the rest week menu for budgetary reasons, and I decided that if I wasn’t going to order off the rest week menu, I might as well splurge and order what I really wanted: the Dover sole. The ironic part of the situation was that The Water Club has a $39 prix fixe “pre-theatre” menu every week! (Despite being no where near Broadway row) And that menu, which is included on their website, is a wonderful balance between showcasing the restaurant’s cooking and leaving off the priciest options. We had expected the $35 rest week menu to be similar … apparently not.
We also ordered a bottle of Sancerre, which was ok … but not as good as I’d expect a restaurant like that to carry. With so many good, inexpensive wines out there, it shows a lack of attention to the wine list that such a sub-par option was even included.
After we’d ordered and my anger at the restaurant melted in the warm, good company of my friend, I relaxed a bit. That is until our food arrived. The rest week menu items that my two friends ordered were decent enough. My veggie friend’s platter was a joke. It was just a bunch of sides heaped onto a plate, none of them cooked particularly well or interestingly, and for $25, hardly worth the pricetag. My Dover sole was very good, with a muniere sauce, all buttery and capered. But I’ve had better Dover sole. It was good, but not $35 entree impressive.
Then came dessert. The waiter came over with only 2 menus, not four, and handed them to the girls who’d ordered off the rest week menu… no dessert for me? My sweet tooth and my pride were offended and I asked him to bring menus to ALL of us. As if that should even have been a question? In the end only the two rest week menu girls decided to order dessert since it was already included, but when they gave their order, the waiter looked at them and said “oh no, you can only have one of the two restaurant week desserts from the other menu.” WHAT? Then why did he hand them the full dessert menus? To show them what they are NOT being offered. It is this kind of lack of attention to detail that you do not expect from such a fancy, high-brow place.
Needless to say, I left the restaurant indignant, angry, and offended. The staff had been less than friendly, less than helpful and less than accommodating. The food was “eh” and the view wasn’t even that great. Why would I go back there? Oh right, I wouldn’t. And I suggest you don’t either.
Seafood – Fancy
The Water Club
The east river and FDR at 30th St.
Murray Hill
