The Triangle

Issue date: 2/27/09 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: Melissa Cell

I loathe Restaurant Week. Being in the industry, I was brought up to despise it. How could we not? "Hell" Week comes but twice a year and every server who works in a participating Philadelphia restaurant puts on their best phony smile and works twice as hard for half the cash.

When a friend asked me to join her at 10 Arts (Ritz-Carlton Hotel, 10 S. Broad St.) during the Devil's holiday, I was more than a little hesitant. But in the end, my passion for dining out trumped even my abhorrence for "I hate working in a" Restaurant Week. At least I was to be on the other side of the table. As it turned out, this restaurant experience did next to nothing to improve my opinion of "I need to get another job that's not in a" Restaurant Week.

My party was seated without a wine list. First blunder, and it happens because restaurants assume that guests who come during this week won't spend anything above the $35 for three courses. It's a mistake, though, because it's like they are purposely trying to keep the check average low. Three brandless wines appeared at the top of the dinner menu, which were $8 each and most likely came from a box.

As is the case with most "I hate everyone who's eating in this" Restaurant Week menus, the food choices were limited, which is fine by me because I can never decide anyway. With a party of three, we had the option to sample almost everything on the menu, which consisted of four appetizer options, three entrees choices and two desserts.

We did not sample everything, though. Only two of the four options for the first course interested us. We chose mini striped bass croquettes with a trio of sauces and heirloom corn chowder with smoked sea salt and crème fraiche. We left behind the goat cheese salad with baby beets and greens, because it's a tired, overused combination and the salmon rillette, a fresh smoked salmon spread that sounded like breakfast. Of the appetizers we did try, the coquettes were reminiscent of fish sticks with no true discernable difference between the sauces and the chowder tasted like canned cream corn.

Thoroughly unsatisfied, we moved to entrees, which were not bad, but still nothing too great. Skipping the brook trout, we chose the tagliatelle with wild mushroom parmesan cream and braised beef short ribs with winter greens, mash potatoes and a red wine brandy sauce - which is almost as played out as the beets and goat cheese combination. Despite lacking creativity, the dishes were definitely edible and somewhat enjoyable. However, nothing stood out to me as a reason that I would come back to 10 Arts, which is supposed to be the whole point of "I'll never again go out for" Restaurant Week.

Continued...

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