Andale

Upscale quasi-Mexican place; supposedly highly authentic, but I’m skeptical. Andale used to be a New American restaurant, but after a vacation in Oaxaca, chef Alison Swope decided to reinvent it as Mexican. This menu is rooted in Mexican cooking, but is too ambitious to be considered representative. Sometimes it is too ambitious to work; out of curiousity and trust, I ordered an duck entree in a complicated chocolate mole sauce, which was heavy without any depth of flavor and basically a disaster.

Andale had just reopened when I visited, so maybe Swope will get the hang of it and the menu will be pruned back to what works. But I’m just not sold on the concept.

Upscale Spanish restaurant. Sadly, Ebeth and I fell quite ill after dining here- speculation is that it might have been because we ate the fruit in the sangria- everything else [including the sangria] was shared with others, and no one else got ill. The food was wonderful, but I can’t quite bring myself to go back.