Some Privacy Is In Order

I had an event to go to in Hollywood on Saturday night, so I used my favorite Open Table app to find a restaurant within walking distance of the Dolby Theatre.  I came across Public Kitchen & Bar which is located in the famous Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and thought that that for sure must be the place we should go.  Boy was I wrong.

After going down the wrong street due to a sign on the building that read "Public Kitchen & Bar" with an arrow pointing that direction, we arrived a few minutes after our scheduled 6pm reservation. We checked in and were seated by the hostess who spent an inordinate amount of time organizing the appetizer plates with the napkin-wrapped silverware as our place settings before we could take our seats.  Then she gave us our menus, poured water in our glasses, and returned to the hostess stand.  And there we sat for ten minutes in the half-back booth before anyone paid us any attention again.

During our wait we not only decided what we wanted from the menu, but started deciding what other restaurants we could go to instead.  The waiter finally arrived and he seemed to be a novice.  No, novice is not the right word.  He seemed like a time traveler who suddenly appeared and was doing the waiter job because it was a way to fit it.  I'm not sure if he was from Journeyman or Quantum Leap, but he definitely is not from this time.  That said, we were in Hollywood.  We ordered our dishes and hoped for the best.

A few minutes later our appetizer appeared.  It seemed unusual that Brussels sprouts would be listed as an appetizer, but we went for it as (A) we like Brussels sprouts, and (B) it could count as our vegetable for the evening.  Forgive me for the pictures below as I forgot to take a picture before I served myself.  So instead there are pictures of my plate and the serving dish after I took my helping.  You'll notice that the creme fraiche is oddly placed inside the serving dish, and yet strangely that is appropriate as we still can't figure out why the Brussels sprouts were served with creme fraiche.  This was an interesting preparation of Brussels sprouts as the kitchen took the time to delicately remove each leaf instead of serving the vegetable whole, chopped, or shredded, as is traditional.  In fact, the dish seemed to be the restaurant's take on kale chips replacing the kale with Brussels sprouts and adding creme fraiche for absolutely no discernible reason.  The appetizer was quite tasty, though a tad sweet, likely from what appeared to be balsamic vinegar at the bottom of my dish.  Not my favorite preparation for Brussels sprouts (http://count4food.blogspot.com/2013/09/another-night-another-meal.html), but it was okay.

Brussels Sprouts (pistachio, herb, creme fraiche)

Serving dish, post serving

Now I'm used to waiting for my food to fired up once the appetizer is completed.  And since we both ordered the sauteed scallops, that meant our entrees should have been served to us within five minutes of the appetizer dishes being bused away.  No such luck.  After twenty-five long minutes spent analyzing just how extremely loud the restaurant was and how inhibitive it was to being able to have any form of conversation with your dining partner, our server finally arrived to tell us our entree would be served in four minutes.  Yes, four minutes.  Not five.  Four.  And how do I know for sure it would be four minutes?  Because he actually held up his hand with his thumb folded down to show me.  Oy.

Except it wasn't four minutes - it was more like ten minutes.  So when our entrees were served and our waiter appeared moments later to ask if everything was okay, I asked for the check.  I mean, I had a show to go to and if it takes thirty-five minutes to cook scallops, how long would it take to process a credit card transaction?  Mind you, never once was an apology made or an explanation given.

We each looked at our dishes and laughed to ourselves.  Was this really an entree?  Two scallops (and for anyone who watches Chopped! you know that two scallops is an appetizer serving and not an entree), two tiny clams, two lardons, one potato (despite the plural in the description) and one tiny piece of carrot that I didn't realize was a carrot until much later.  Oh, and let me not forget the three tablespoons of clam chowder.  That might not be accurate - it was possibly only two tablespoons.  Before we dived in (can you actually say "dive in" with so little food?) we joked about where we would go for Second Dinner as this certainly would not sustain us, but we definitely were not ordering anything else from this establishment.

The meal strategizing stopped and we dove in, no snorkel equipment needed.  The scallops were tasty and cooked perfectly.  The bacon was smoky, which my husband liked, but I didn't.  That's right!  You heard it here first!  Bacon that I did not like.  The clams were so tiny they were barely noticeable and I'm not sure why I bothered to use my knife with either the potato or the carrot, but maybe i did so just to make them last.  And then thankfully we were given a soup spoon to spoon up our heaping helpings of clam chowder.

Sauteed Scallops (clam chowder, braised bacon, leeks, potatoes, carrot)

I signed the check while finishing my slurping and out of the restaurant we quickly went as I didn't want to spend one more moment there.  I would not recommend this place to anyone.  The food was okay, but not worth the money and the service was terrible.  And maybe its just me, but when I go out to eat with someone, I like to be able to hear what they say.  But thankfully I had my phone to entertain me.