TL;DR version – food was pretty interesting and tasty, but service was pretty poor. we were seated at the bar and somehow they seemed to forget about us a couple times(?!)
We first ate here almost 3 years ago now and enjoyed ourselves. So we had been talking about revisiting (always so many restaurants to try or revisit…first world problems). We were supposed to have truffles arriving, but the shipment was delayed so I made a reservation for True Laurel for pre-dinner drinks and then dinner here at Ernest. Because I had made last minute reservations, we had to go with bar seating since that was the earliest option at 7:15pm (table would have been 7:45pm and we don’t really like to eat out late, esp. during the work week).
We were seated after a minor delay and knew we were going to go with the “Let the Kitchen Cook for You” tasting menu with the upgrade for the caviar and uni as well as the beverage pairing. It was moderately priced at $139 pp for the tasting menu (normal tasting menu w/o upgrades is $99pp) and $67pp for the wine pairing.
The tasting menu consists of essentially 4 courses (starters, salads, main, and desserts) with multiple dishes served for each course. We really enjoy this format because we get to try so many different things.
First course comes out and there is so much going on here. First there was the a tray of ice with the Hog Island Oyster, Live Scallop, Sushi Rice, and Grilled Octopus and also the Hon Hamachi Tartare all of which I assume was part of the regular tasting menu and then there were the upgrades which included the Osetra Caviar and the Uni Toast. Wow!
We started with the Osetra caviar, from Tsar Nicolau, which interestingly came with a japanese egg salad and steamed buns like with peking duck and you make that into a bite. It was unique and I was ok with it, but then again I love egg salad and Andrea hates it. It was a miss for her for sure and I actually only thought it was ok. I can’t say I’m fond of using the steamed bun as a carrier with caviar. All in all, I thought this was a great egg salad dish, but only mediocre as a caviar course. The uni was from Hokkaido on a brioche which all sounds pretty great, but I don’t recall it being particularly flavorful and the uni didn’t stand out.
The Hog Island Oysters were dressed with Kombu vinegar and sesame so was a nice fresh way to start. The scallop came with a chile morita ponzu was delicous (and Andrea loves ponzu, but with the morita chile it definitely gave it a pop and another layer to the flavor. The Sushi Rice is really a little layered dish with the sushi rice on the bottom, beef tartare in the middle, and the top is ikura (salmon roe) served with nori to make little handrolls. This was also pretty good. The grilled octopus was served with some apple julienned and radish and other flavors, but really the octopus got lost in all of that which is too bad. The Hon Hamachi Tartare came with tozasu (vinegar, soy sauce, mirin, dashi) and negi (Japanese long green onion) and half piece of shokupan (Japanese milk bread). I honestly can’t remember too much about this since it was lost in the shuffle of all the other dishes (although looking at the ingredients again, it sounds great), but we definitely finished it all. All of this was just the first course which I vaguely remember being similar to our experience here the first time.
There was a bit of delay until our second course arrived, which was just as well since I needed time for that first course to make it through my digestive system. In this second course, we had the Parker House Rolls, the Radicchio, and the California Citrus. Given how much food we had in the first course and what we feared for the main course, we were very happy to see that this was primarily vegetables and fruit. The rolls were accompanied with some cultured butter with just a bit of the milk. The rolls tasted like good moist butter brushed parker rolls made even better with the cultured butter. We are also very pleased with the radicchio which also came with some small cubes of beets and at the bottom was some stracciatella dressed with a light vinegary dressing. The California Citrus came with citrus bus also with bits of carrot which gave it a bit more richness to balance out the acidity. Both these dishes and even when it got mixed on the plate together were really good.
For some unknown reason, there seemed to be a very long wait for the next course, so much so that after waiting for what was probably close to 30 minutes, I asked the bartender if our food was coming. He apologized and went upstairs to the kitchen. This fortunately resulted in our food showing up relatively shortly thereafter. Mercifully, there was only one main and a rice for the final savory course. The main was Thai Pork Sausage with a red curry vinaigrette with a bit of greens, shallot, grapefruit and the Koshihikari Fried Rice had some brassica, almonds, and raisins. Each of these wonderful layers of flavors and even though we were a bit jaded by this point because of the service shortcomings, we were quite satisfied by the flavors of both of these dishes. The pork sausage and curry were both well flavored and the grapefruit gave it a bit of acidic pop to lift it up. The fried rice wasn’t too heavy or oily and the raisins gave little pops of sweetness to balance the flavors out.
We also, fortunately, did not need to wait to long for dessert (I think they got the message…). The first of two desserts was the Hazelnut Soft Serve Sundae. We remember this well from the last time we dined here because of the chocolate magic shell poured over the soft serve ice cream and caramel hazelnut sauce. The magic shell quickly hardens. The flavor on this was like the best version of those chocolate crunch ice cream bars so was both nostalgic and delicious. The second dessert, Meyer Lemon Kakigori, arrived shortly after the magic shell. This is basically a Japanese shaved ice topped with a bit of creamy sauce and crumble. Both dessert were quite enjoyable and a nice end to the meal.
Wines were all ok, but nothing particularly memorable, but it was very moderately priced. One note on the bathroom, it was interesting that they had menus framed from other high end restaurants (e.g. Noma, Saison, Coi, etc.).
So, all in all, our second visit was enjoyable for the food, but marred by the subpar service which was so surprising given we were literally in front of the bartender the entire time (and then again, he was focused on prepping drinks). I’d certainly consider dining here again, but most definitely not at the bar again.
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