review: disappointed at hamersley's bistro

i've heard great things about hamersley's bistro, and i've always wanted to have dinner there. i got my wish when i suggested it as our january cutcat dinner destination. i had high hopes when we entered and i saw that it was a restaurant fitted into an old house - the dining room is irregularly shaped, which is always fun because it subdivides the restaurant into smaller "rooms." the decor is really nice - high ceilings, colorful but not too busy curtains, bright but mellow colors, an orange banquette along one wall. if i had to give the style a name, i might call it "new colonial." to go with hamersley's bistro's "new american" food.

i would say that the food was pretty good - i thought the first two courses were really good, though the dessert was slightly hit or miss. i started with a grilled pizza appetizer with "creamy salt cod" and a black olive tapenade. i was trying to be adventurous - i don't always like salt cod, but was intrigued by "creamy salt cod" - how, exactly, was it going to be creamy? and salt cod and tapenade? technically that should work together - those two salty ingredients combined would theoretically create an even saltier whole. i guess the bread part of the pizza tamed the tapenade, though, as did the creaminess of the salt cod. it was a little salty, but not excessively so. and the crust was perfect for an appetizer-type pizza - slightly chewy, but also very crispy, so it didn't get soggy with the cod on top. and really, the cod was slightly salty, but the creaminess of it balanced the saltiness of the olive tapenade - i felt that the cod was there for a texture contrast, not just for flavor. not only that, but the pizza came with a small salad of field greens with some sort of very acidic but buttery (probably from the olive oil) vinaigrette. normally i don't like my salad dressing to be so piquant, but in combination with the pizza it was really great - it's like having wine that complements cheese. rarely does one have a perfectly dressed salad, but i would say this is it. and it was an interesting use of a salad. all in all, a really fantastic first course.

as a main course both eric and i had the cassoulet. it crops up so infrequently on restaurant menus that i've only ever had canned cassoulet. this isn't as disgusting as you might think - after all, i bought it from cardullo's so it was not only canned cassoulet, but gourmet canned cassoulet. as gourmet as one can get from a can, that is. it was really hot when it arrived from the kitchen - perhaps a bit too hot. it was a large, shallow bowl of beans with large pieces of meat in the middle: a chunk of pork shoulder, a pork and garlic sausage, and duck confit (what seemed to be a leg and a large chunk of breast). on top - and this is a pet peeve - there were a few sprigs of parsley. i hate it when garnishes are just garnishes - when they're not a part of the dish you're meant to eat. sprigs of parsley on a dish to me indicates that i'm not supposed to eat it, since it wasn't minced and sprinkled over my dinner. so boo to parsley!

the cassoulet itself, though, was terrific. i'm realizing i'm not a huge fan of sausage where the forcemeat is really coherent and homogenous, but the flavor was great. i was surprised by how pink it was (not because it was uncooked, but for some other reason i don't know). the pork shoulder was very flavorful and tender, though, and the confit was crusted with some fantastically crispy breadcrumbs, which provided a welcome texture contrast from the overall soft stewiness of the dish.

i actually didn't finish the cassoulet, because before the first course i had three pieces of bread. sorry, i was really hungry! i'd just walked from cutcat to the restaurant (about 2.6 miles), too. and the first piece was this soft cheesebread - a soft bread with medium-sized air pockets, crusted with grated cheese on top. beyond the shock that it was cold - the cheesebread i had at pomodoro last sunday was warm - it was really good. the other bread was light brown with tiny dark brown flecks - like vanilla flecks, but smaller and brown. perhaps it was the type of flour? whatever it was, it was addictive. it had a sweet, slightly sour, nutty flavor to it that made it irresistible. but i have to say that i wish restaurants would stop serving cold bread, at least in the winter. i come in from the cold, and all you have to offer me is some cold bread? you've got to be kidding me.

we decided to have dessert, and i got the caramel bread pudding with a rum raisin sauce. i don't know where hamersley's gets its raisins, but they were huge! twice as big as normal raisins that we peons eat. sadly, it wasn't really that great. i should have asked if the bread pudding had raisins in it - i'm not a fan of raisins in bread pudding. this one was also too eggy, though the rum raisin sauce was excellent - so i felt like i was eating a fragmented egg custard, rather than a rich and slightly creamy bread pudding. carrie fared better with her savarin with apple compote and cider sabayon. apparently the pastry chef is a master with dessert sauces, because the sabayon was thick, airy, and perfectly (ie, not too ostentatiously) packed with apple, cider, and calvados flavor. it was a perfectly tailored and classic couture gown (oxymoron, but bear with me) rather than the melodramatic showy pageant dress.

so where, you ask, is the disappointment? well, beyond the fact that as i think about it more, i dislike that bread pudding more, the service was awful. i admit it: i'm two years out of college. i still look pretty young. but the waitstaff is still supposed to treat me like i'm an adult, because i am an adult! just because i'm young doesn't mean i know nothing about food, or that i don't know the ins and outs of a nice restaurant. i forgive the erratic and careless refilling of water glasses (ice cube on the table, refilled glasses left two-thirds full). i even forgive the haste and clatter with which the busboy cleared and reset tables, even though i consider it to be jarring and distracting for the waitstaff to hurry around like chickens with their heads cut off. i understand - it was a busy time on a friday night, and both kitchen and waitstaff had gotten slammed. however, i expect to be treated well when i go out, and a little friendliness would have gone a long way to erase the technical difficulties of the waitstaff. our waiter started out fairly friendly, if a little patronizing, but it got worse as the night went on. when we were ordering dessert, keith asked what the cheeses were on the cheese plate, and our waiter said he'd ask what the exact cheeses were, beyond the general types. he came back five minutes later, without cheese names. his response to keith asking what the cheese were: "do you really want to know?" i mean...people don't ask frivolous questions at restaurants because they're usually afraid they'll look gauche or like an idiot. so yes, when i ask a question, i really do want to know. i don't care if you've got too many tables! it wasn't an unreasonable request.

i guess i just thought that i was done with being patronized by waitstaff because i look young; as a result i've probably overreacted a little bit. but just that one flaw was enough to seal the deal for me: i don't think i'll be going back to hamersley's bistro. did i need to present a list of all of the restaurants i've been to or something to prove my restaurant worthiness, my pedigree? i needed to mention that i've been to alinea, l'espalier, aujourd'hui, craigie street, chez panisse, french laundry? i'm not dressed well enough, and i don't have the hauteur and pretention of a wealthy snob? great. i'll go somewhere more deserving without another thought.