Hopes Raised, Abandoned at Belmont Restaurant

We really wanted to like the Belmont restaurant. In fact, after a shaky first experience, we decided to give it another chance. After all, talented Chef Ben Nathan, decor by Joel Mozersky, some decent word-of-mouth and a pretty website had us convinced that our first experience there--inconsistent cocktails, incompetent bar service and half-assed bar food--was most certainly a fluke.

We're sad to say just how wrong we were.

Our second trip offered really good service from the start. Two friendly hostesses met us at the door, and seated us immediately in a beautiful back room. Our able waiter walked us through a fine wine list, introducing us to nice Pinot Grigio and a wonderful Malbec. We ambled ambivalently through an unoffensive queso appetizer with black beans and chorizo. The menu offered a collection of traditional fare, some kitschy and old school (think wedge salad with bleu cheese dressing, steaks, etc.) We chose the fish, sat back, enjoyed our wine and anticipated the flavors that should comprise a hundred dollar meal.

Then the food arrived and negated all the good stuff.

On one plate sat tuna, fingerling potatoes and roasted tomatoes, all drenched in a mustardy vinaigrette so overpowering that the tough tuna (ordered rare) tasted much the same as the potatoes and tomatoes. Another plate hosted snapper, rice pilaf and asparagus, swimming in a monotonous sugary swamp of pineapple juice. It was as if the food before us was cooked by someone's kind-of-crazy grandma. In 1963. From a 1958 cookbook.

We politely struggled through our food, declining dessert, coffee or more wine.

The looks on our faces must have given us away as our waiter rushed the check to us, telling us to have a good evening in the same voice a one night stand might use to say, "I'll call you," the morning after. We scuttled away, disappointed, still hungry, poorer, and with nothing to show for it.

You win some, you lose some.

photo by MJ Milloy on Flickr

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By Sam Armstrong in Food on January 16, 2007 7:10 AM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

Joe

I always consider it a mistake to order seafood in any town that isn't a seaport. Of course there's no guarantee you'll be getting fresh fish or competent preparation on the coast, but the odds are higher.

But it sounds like the problems at this place are far larger and more systemic.

jimmy

great room, we had tasty martini's and yummy salmon and salads. we will be back

tom

i had a great time and the steaks were the best we have had in austin

ultradave

Yeah, nice-looking place but wow did they blow it with staffing. Food is so bad it's like some kind of performance art (I kept waiting for someone to come out with a camera and tell me it was a joke), and its always a great sign to order drinks from a bartender who tells you "I don't know what that is" when you ask for a manhatttan, and then looks at you like you're a jackass for ordering it. Wow.

I'll give them a few months to get all this sorted, but in the meantime I am steering WAAAAAY clear of it.

Jmac

Incompetent bar staff no doubt. Over the weekend I leaned over the downstairs bar and said "gin gimlet, with onions". The tardbender scoffed "with onions?!" as if I requested something out of the ordinary, bizarre or severely not-right. Maybe I missed the new rage with gimlet style only in-the-know kool kids can cop to, but unless I'm mistaken, onions are traditional. Hindsight always 20-20, I should have told him I was just "Keepin' it weird". The irony of a Native saying that to him when ordering a traditional drink in just the kind of yuppie hoedown that is making Austin anything but weird... most likely woulda been lost. Oh well. At least he had a foreign accent, that always helps any situation.

When I got my drink, it had 2 pitiful, floppy little onionettes, but whatever, onions. I took a sip. I'm not sure how, but in a drink composed of gin and juice (and onions), this dude fucked it up. The good news: it was real juice. The bad news, it was way too much, and bitter.

Fortunately we made our way over to Hi-Lo who served it well and classy.

oh, steph

I just saw an ad on Craigslist for a Sous Chef position at the Belmont. Perhaps the bartenders were pulling double duty and making sloppy sauces....or maybe you got the sous chef fired! The austinist deals another crushing blow.

bug

I can't agree with you more. I had high hopes myself, but the food is fried to within an inch of its life, and the clueless college-aged wait staff knows little of bartending outside offering you another bud-lite.

There's a lot of potential there, but the belmont has squandered so much of it on the physical space that they have little/none left over for actually hosting their guests in style.