On restaurant week, and dinner at T*yst

UPDATE: Ah, the power of new media. I received a phone call this morning from Jeremy Barlow, the chef at T*yst. He was genuinely apologetic for our experience at the restaurant. He did not make excuses or sound defensive, but simply apologized for the service we received and said that it was completely inconsistent with the restaurant's philosophy and would be addressed. Finally, he said that he knew I might never want to return to T*yst (as I had said in my original post), but that, if I changed my mind, he would appreciate the second chance.

In all, he handled the situation absolutely perfectly. Tone, it is everything. I am even tempted (just barely) to take him up on his offer so at least I can give the food a fair shake, as perhaps my taste buds were dulled by the rudeness.

I've also decided to use asterisks in all of my references to T*yst in this post. That way, anyone who reads the post will know the restaurant to which I am referring, but the post will not be the first thing that pops up when you Google "T*yst Restaurant Week," which is the case right now. Although I am still upset, that just seems a tad unfair. Note that this is not something that Jeremy requested or even suggested; he took no issue with the content of my post or with the fact that I had posted at all. This is my decision, and one that I believe is fair.

I feel like I have been channeling Regina Schrambling. First, I announce my intention never to eat at the Frist Center Cafe again. Then, for the past month, I've been sitting on a review of a reasonably well-known and well-regarded Nashville restaurant with which I was sorely disappointed. (Don't worry, I will post it one of these days. I just thought I'd spread out the negativity a little bit to keep things interesting.)

And then there was Restaurant Week, which has inspired the following screed. (In case you're unfamiliar, during Restaurant Week restaurants can choose -- completely voluntarily -- to serve a three course menu for $20.08. The idea is to make restaurants more accessible and encourage diners to try new places.)

I've done Restaurant Week in New York and D.C., at higher-end restaurants and more middle-brow ones, and I have long since sworn it off. The problem with Restaurant Week (much like Valentine's Day, another time I avoid restaurants like the plague), is that it brings out the rookies -- people who don't know food very well, who don't eat out very often, and for whom cost is more of a concern than for a restaurant's usual clientele. And while, in theory, it's great that people can try something new and expose themselves to good food during Restaurant Week, that's rarely how it works. Instead, restaurants perceive the Restaurant Week clientele as uninformed and cheap, and both the food and the service typically suffer as a result.

I could list a thousand examples, but here's just one. The last time I ate out during Restaurant Week was for lunch at D.C. Coast in Washington a few years ago. The menu included panna cotta, one of my absolute favorites, for dessert. However, when my panna cotta arrived, the top surface bore the unmistakable indentation of the "Solo" logo from the plastic cup in which the panna cotta apparently had been chilled. Now, I understand that a restaurant has to make large quantities of its Restaurant Week dishes and might take some shortcuts, but allowing a Solo cup indentation to remain on my panna cotta? Tacky, tacky, tacky. I can't imagine that would ever pass muster on an item off the restaurant's regular menu.

So when Nashville's Restaurant Week rolled around, I was hesitant for all of the usual reasons, not to mention the fact that I'd already tried a number of the restaurants on the list and was only impressed with one or two of them. But one restaurant on the list -- T*yst -- was one that I still wanted to try and that is known for its commitment to using fresh, local ingredients. Maybe T*yst's approach to Restaurant Week would mirror its wholesome, hippie approach to food, I thought. Maybe Restaurant Week in Nashville would be different because it's not a big food town. Maybe Nashville restaurants aren't as jaded and snobby as New York restaurants can be. Maybe these restaurants will take full advantage of the opportunity to wow new diners and lure them back. And, after all, Restaurant Week is completely optional, and maybe the restaurants here take their participation a little more seriously than do some restaurants in other, bigger cities.

And so I shelved my usual objections, gathered a group of good friends, and made a reservation. On the phone, I asked what the Restaurant Week menu would be, and was informed that it depended on what was fresh at the market that day. My heart (and stomach) did a happy little flip-flop. I was also informed that whatever was served would be prix fixe -- three courses, with no choices -- but that it could be prepared to suit a vegetarian diet if necessary.

We arrived at the appointed time and were escorted to a long table in the corner of the room. The room was fairly nondescript, despite the fact that the walls were painted a deep ruby in an apparent attempt to create some warmth. I was optimistic that this dinner would change my perception of Restaurant Week, but my optimism went out of the window just minutes after sitting down, and I soon realized that, if this meal were to change my perception of Restaurant Week at all, it would only be for the worse.

It was so unbelievably bad that I barely know where to begin, or what to bitch about the most.

Let's start with the menus themselves. When we sat down, we were handed three menus: the regular menu (as I would expect), the Restaurant Week prix fixe menu, and a list of three additional prix fixe menus at three different (higher) price points. First, the Restaurant Week menu. It struck me immediately that all three dishes on the menu were meats -- seafood sausage, rabbit terrine, and ribs. Every other restaurant I have visited during Restaurant Week has offered an appetizer, entree, and dessert, or some minor variation on that theme, as their three dishes. As I understand it, the very concept of Restaurant Week is to enable diners to have a three course meal that spans the menu. But T*yst's meat-heavy menu just seemed a cheap and underhanded ploy to pad the bill by essentially requiring diners to tack on another $8-$10 if they wanted to end their meal with something sweet. It was a cynical move by the restaurant, and it turned me off before I'd had even a single bite to eat.

Then there were the three additional prix fixe menus. These were labeled "Value Meals" that you could "Supersize" with wine pairings. A restaurant that bills itself as "green" co-opting language from McDonald's, of all places? It was just so off and out of place. What a terrible miscalculation. Of course, in the grand scheme, it was a minor detail and an easily-overlooked offense if it were isolated. But it wasn't isolated, but rather was just one example of how tone-deaf the restaurant (and the service) was.

The most egregious service blunder (and to call it a "blunder" is generous) occurred early on, when one member of our group asked our waiter if the Restaurant Week menu was good. He responded, "not if you're hungry." I nearly fell off my chair. I didn't know how I should interpret his comment – was it reflective of the restaurant's dismissive attitude towards Restaurant Week in general, or was it simply a server's severely misguided effort to encourage choices that would lead to a higher tab? Maybe both? In any case, it was possibly the single-most off-putting remark I have ever heard in a restaurant. Had I been with J-P or with a smaller group, I would have gotten up and left right then.

But that wasn't an option on this night. We had a big group -- eleven of us -- and we were looking forward to the company perhaps more than anything. And so we soldiered on. But the service didn't improve, unfortunately. When I ordered two appetizers and asked for one as my entree, our waiter encouraged me, much too eagerly, to order a larger entree-sized portion. Do I want to know if that's an option? Yes. Do I want to be made to feel cheap for not ordering it? No.

He also consistently provided either too much information or too little in response to our questions, both of which struck us as patronizing. In listing the cheeses on the cheese plate, he described each in great detail, as if he assumed we were only familiar with cheese that comes out of an aerosol can. Tennessee cheddar? I think that's pretty self-explanatory, buddy, no need for the treatise. But then a friend asked what "wahu" is, and he responded, "it's a fish in the escolar family." Full stop. Thanks for the edification. Now what the hell is the escolar family? Once again, it was just amazingly tone-deaf. What he should have done in both cases is to try for the middle ground and not assume that we're idiots, but also not assume that we've all been to culinary school or have advanced degrees in marine biology.

Sigh. I'm tired just thinking about it all, and we haven't even gotten to the food yet.

Our meal started with a basket of tiny biscuits, half of which were burnt. Not browned. Not caramelized. Not anything good. Burnt. The other half, one of which I was lucky enough to snag, were tough and under-seasoned. Not to mention that they were so insanely tiny -- the circumference of a quarter, maybe -- that I seriously wondered whether the biscuits were made extra-tiny just for Restaurant Week. And the hummus that accompanied the biscuits was an odd choice. If it were pita? Then yes, hummus. But biscuits? Butter, please, or something sweet, for the love of god.

For our meals, about half of the group opted for the Restaurant Week menu, a few chose one of the other prix fixe menus, and the rest (myself included) ordered a la carte. The food ranged from eh to okay to good. My favorite was the fried green tomatoes, which had been spread with a shrimp paste and then deep fried and served in a soy-based broth. (It was billed as a glaze, but was too runny to really qualify.) It was a good blend of flavors, if a far cry from the traditional Southern preparation of fried green tomatoes, and the addition of shrimp gave the dish some caloric heft. My "duck cake" was not so successful. Essentially shredded duck meat that had been pressed into a square patty and then pan fried, it was dry and relatively flavorless. I had a similar dish prepared with pork a few years ago at New York's Eleven Madison Park, and that dish was transcendant. This one never got off the ground.

Problems with seasoning, texture, and temperature were pervasive, sometimes all affecting a single dish. The seafood sausage had a strange mealy texture, although of course seafood lacks the fat that normally binds sausage together. But the fact that the sausage was made of seafood cannot account for it being served unappetizingly at room temperature. I'm not sure whether I would have preferred it hot or cold, but at room temperature it was just all the more apparent that this was a throw-away dish that had not been given much thought or attention. What's more, the sauce that accompanied the sausage was bland, forcing one of my friends to unscrew the top off the pepper shaker and administer a hefty dose to remedy the problem.

The high point of the evening was definitely dessert, which perhaps makes it all the more irritating that dessert was not included as part of the Restaurant Week menu. The creme brulee was good, and the chocolate cake bittersweet and rich. The star of the night was the Krispy Kreme pudding -- essentially a compressed bread pudding made of Krispy Kreme donuts. It may have also been fried and most certainly involved copious amounts of butter, and it was accompanied by a tiny shot-glass sized milk shake. It was outstanding, by far the best thing I ate all night.

But unfortunately, too little, too late. I will never go back, Restaurant Week or otherwise, and I know others in my group feel the same way. T*yst had a glorious chance to win over eleven(!) diners, and blew it in the worst imaginable way.