Nirvana

it isn’t.

But wait, there’s more!

After a long wait, four of us received appetizers — in fact, two of us ordered the same appetizer, but only one arrived in the first wave. About twenty minutes pass, and before the remaining appetizers can arrive, a guy in a dirty shirt comes by and starts taking our plates away. We tell him that we are expecting more appetizers and want to keep the plates; he asks us three times, confrontationally, whether we really want to keep the plates, and then calls over to our waitress, “They’re getting more appetizers?” Eventually we convince him to give us our plates back.

We wait. The remaining appetizers arrive. We eat them. We wait. The same guy comes out, looks at our empty plates, and says, “Guess you weren’t getting more appetizers after all!”

I can’t imagine anyone going to this restaurant twice.

Judging from her review, ebeth was so upset by the experience that she missed a few items in her review, which I will provide here.

Time from seating to entrees: two hours. I kid you not. Admittedly, some of our party were late, so it was only 90 minutes from when they were seated until the food arrived, but the rest of us had to make do with an appetizer round for two hours.

They were out of ebeths first two choices of appetizers, and her first choice of entree too. They were out of my first choice of entree (actually a vada I had ordered as an accompaniment) although it took them maybe 15 minutes to realize this after taking my order. The beer taps were broken, so drafts were unavailable.

The fellow toting the water pitchers around was extraordinary. “Do you want more water” and “are you done with that plate” came out not as inquiries but practically as challenges of honor, and he set refilled glasses down as though he were trying to embed their stems into the table.

I thought the appetizers were actually pretty good, but their goodness was completely overwhelmed by the disappointment of the entrees. The mushrooms in my saag were lifeless and looked canned. Nothing was up to a proper temperature. My lassi was thick, but tasted rather more like Dannon than like homemade yogurt.

We did in fact leave a small tip as a token for the wait staff’s labor, but more a token of acknowledgement than a token of appreciation.

-dave

A Taste of Purgatory

Once more the food-plan crew was led astray by my bad judgement: I trusted a review by Tom Sietsema of The Washington Post. Last night we visited Nirvana and had a truly awful experience.

Four of our group of six showed up rather too early (blame traffic), but since we had a reservation, we were seated promptly. However, it took a major effort to get a waitress to attend. After 15 minutes, we finally placed a drink and appetizer order. The drinks didn’t arrive until after the rest of our group came in and placed their orders; I believe the elapsed time was something like 30 minutes. The appetizers showed up much later than that.

I can’t tell you how long it took for the staff to deliver our main courses, since I was dazed by lack of food and insufficient alcohol (the house cocktails are ridiculously weak). I believe it to be more than an hour. The only acknowledgemt we got was “it will be awhile, since you’re a big party”, or something to that effect. Six is a big party?

In the meantime, while we waited and waited and waited, other parties were seated, ordered their food, ate, paid and left before we even could get the waitress to take our dinner order.

It was clear from the beginning that Nirvana was in over its head. Although a few food-plan people were inclined to forgive (at least early on), I can’t. The restaurant is in a good location. They have a small number of tables. They should be prepared to handle a full house on a Friday night. If not, close off a section and allow those who are seated to have good service. If you’re inclined to think that they should be given a break because the Post review created a rush of patrons, I say hogwash. From Sietsema’s recent explanation of the review process it seems that the target restaurant gets a heads-up (otherwise where would the pictures come from?). They know that a review is about to be published.

At any rate, you might chalk it up to a new restaurant’s growing pains and decide to revisit after they’ve had the chance to settle in — if the food was any good. But it wasn’t. The cocktails were weak. The bar tap was broken, so there were no draft beers. Several dishes were mysteriously unavailable. Pappadum were decent, and so were the lentil cakes (amiri khaman), but unexciting. Samosas were the best thing on the table, fairly greasless and tasty. But the main courses were terrible. Paneer makhan masala was cold, and the “creamy tomato sauce with a smooth taste” tasted like canned tomato paste. Mutter paneer was exactly the same dish, but with tough peas added (at least it was warm). Chole masala was utterly unexciting. Dal makhani was bland (what ginger? where’s the garlic?). Palak with mushrooms tasted only of overcooked spinach. The dosa was limp. The roti never showed up. Even the rice was dry.

The management at the Bethesda branch of Jaleo, to which I shall never return, was decent enough to offer to pay our bill after entirely misplacing our order, turning a lunch foray into a two hour exercise in tedium. But do you think Nirvana had the class to even once apologize or take a few items off our bill in compensation for our foodless hours? Nope. But they added an 18% gratuity to the bill. What a slap in the face. I suppose they were punishing us for bringing in a large party (ha) on a weekend night. (Like there weren’t several parties of five around, which there were.)

We split the pre-gratuity total evenly among us, setting the cash on the table, and walked out. What a debacle. I’m thinking of starting a betting pool to see how long Nirvana lasts. Any takers?