Dine About Town: 1550 Hyde and Scott Howard
We have very little to say about our meals at 1550 Hyde Street Cafe and Scott Howard. Both were good, but unremarkable.
At 1550, we decided to veer from the prix fixe menu and just get the entrees we wanted. We had some roquefort cheese with grilled pears and walnuts which was a nice start along with a salad of frisee and arugula with apples and manchego. Heather and I both had the fresh paparadelle with milk-braised berkshire pork, spinach, and pecorino. This dish was good and I would get it again, but it was merely good. Sarah had these ricotta-fontina fritters with lentils, an interesting dish that yet was not as satisfying as the word "fritters" would lead you believe. We passed on dessert since we were all quite tired. In our view, the restaurant did a lot of things well, but we just didn't fall in love.
We were most excited for Scott Howard, but again we walked away underwhelmed. We were into the Dine About Town menu which gave us starters of a mache and frisee salad with apple, blue cheese, fennel, and chapagne vinaigrette and also smoked salmon with fingerling potato salad and green apple. They graciously allowed us to swap the short ribs with orzo mac and cheese in as an entree for the prix fixe, which I ordered and went halvsies with Heather's order of the Maine sea scallops with maitake mushrooms and potato puree and saffron sauce. Sarah had the scallops as well. Ethan had the Scottish salmon with shallot confit, hedgehog mushrooms, fingerling potatoes, and curry beurre blanc. For dessert, we either had the panna cotta with citrus salad or the warm chocolate cake. Again, everything was fine, but we had hoped for more.
Dining out for us is a treat, so Date Night has high standards and expectations. Yet at the same time, our expectations also stem from how these restaurants bill themselves. 1550 is a solid neighborhood restaurant that if we lived in the neighborhood we'd probably go to. But its ambitions to also be something of a destination were unrealized in our experience. Scott Howard seems to see itself very much as a destination, maybe less so now than before, but the meal we had there was not winning enough. We wouldn't tell anybody not to go to either of these restaurants, but we also wouldn't push anyone to try them.
At 1550, we decided to veer from the prix fixe menu and just get the entrees we wanted. We had some roquefort cheese with grilled pears and walnuts which was a nice start along with a salad of frisee and arugula with apples and manchego. Heather and I both had the fresh paparadelle with milk-braised berkshire pork, spinach, and pecorino. This dish was good and I would get it again, but it was merely good. Sarah had these ricotta-fontina fritters with lentils, an interesting dish that yet was not as satisfying as the word "fritters" would lead you believe. We passed on dessert since we were all quite tired. In our view, the restaurant did a lot of things well, but we just didn't fall in love.
We were most excited for Scott Howard, but again we walked away underwhelmed. We were into the Dine About Town menu which gave us starters of a mache and frisee salad with apple, blue cheese, fennel, and chapagne vinaigrette and also smoked salmon with fingerling potato salad and green apple. They graciously allowed us to swap the short ribs with orzo mac and cheese in as an entree for the prix fixe, which I ordered and went halvsies with Heather's order of the Maine sea scallops with maitake mushrooms and potato puree and saffron sauce. Sarah had the scallops as well. Ethan had the Scottish salmon with shallot confit, hedgehog mushrooms, fingerling potatoes, and curry beurre blanc. For dessert, we either had the panna cotta with citrus salad or the warm chocolate cake. Again, everything was fine, but we had hoped for more.
Dining out for us is a treat, so Date Night has high standards and expectations. Yet at the same time, our expectations also stem from how these restaurants bill themselves. 1550 is a solid neighborhood restaurant that if we lived in the neighborhood we'd probably go to. But its ambitions to also be something of a destination were unrealized in our experience. Scott Howard seems to see itself very much as a destination, maybe less so now than before, but the meal we had there was not winning enough. We wouldn't tell anybody not to go to either of these restaurants, but we also wouldn't push anyone to try them.
posted by Candace at 11:40 PM
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