No sir, I didn’t like it.

It’s finally happened.  If I didn’t realize it before, I certainly do now.  I am a dining snob.  Well, maybe not a snob, exactly, but I know what I want/expect from a dining experience and when I don’t get it, it throws me off kilter just a bit.  Man Unit and I really enjoy our excursions to great restaurants in our area.  We like to go to places where we can get a total dining experience, that is, we like to be immersed in it, taken away to another plane of existence, if you will.  From the time we touch down in the doorway to the time we exit, we want to be taken somewhere memorable.  We want the restaurant to tell us its story and we’ve been damned lucky on our dining tour of the ATL over the past few years in that we haven’t struck out once.  Until now.

Saturday night Man Unit suggested that perhaps it was time to refresh our tour by finding somewhere new to add to the list.  Coincidentally, I’d been kicking around a few places myself, so I suggested either Bacchanalia or Canoe.  After some research (i.e., drooling over the menu), we decided on Sunday brunch at the latter; I made reservations through OpenTable.  Somewhere I had read that you could smoke on the patio (a huge plus for Man Unit), so I requested patio seating in the request.  When the confirmation hit, I was informed that my reservation was complete, but if I had any special requests, I’d need to call the restaurant directly.  I checked their website again, and indeed, was informed that if we wanted patio seating, it was pretty much first come, first served.  No problem; that’s the way it is at most restaurants when it comes to dining al fresco anywhere.

We arrived pretty pumped, but not sure we really wanted to sit outside due to the already oppressive summer weather, so I left it up to Man Unit.  When we asked the hostesses about smoking on the patio, Canoe made its first mistake.  One pretty blonde instantly made the “ew” face and said that the only way you could smoke was to go beyond the perimeter of the patio itself.  A lack of graciousness when delivering bad news starts to send me down the wrong path.  Man Unit later told me he was ready to call it quits then, but decided to press bravely on for me.  We were seated immediately indoors and our server came along in short order to take our drink order.  As we waited, I had a look around the dining room to see what sort of clientele they drew.  We’re an interracial and tattooed couple if I hadn’t mentioned it before and our entrance can often be an accurate barometer for what kind of place we’re in.  The more I looked, the more I began to believe that this wasn’t our sort of place as we got a mix of “complete ignore” and “annoyed stare”.  The restaurant is in a rather chi-chi self-important neighborhood and it showed.

We’d decided on our meal by the time the server came back but lo and behold, she’d forgotten to tell us about the specials, another strike.  Deliver those first before the decision making process begins, please.  Man Unit ordered the salmon on a potato cake appetizer and the salmon Eggs Benedict entree; I went with the she-crab soup and the wild mushroom, bacon and goat cheese quiche.  Now, what do you think when you hear potato cake?  I think of a circle of tender, moist potato in a crispy crust.  What MU got was something that looked like those fried potato strings in a can.  The house smoked salmon was a bit of a miss as well as it didn’t have that melting quality that good smoked salmon should have.  This tasted pretty much like the scraps I pick up at Whole Foods to make salmon salad with.  The way the soup was described, I expected a treasure trove of crab, but that was not to be either.  I was practically fishing for any bites at all.  Away went our plates and we sat and waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  As MU was mentioning that the table had been empty for some time, I spied our server making her way to us with our entrees.

The food was well presented on the plate and we dug in.  MU took a fork to his to cut a piece and was unsuccessful.  What?  He couldn’t use his fork alone to cut through the English muffin on the bottom?  He approached it with his knife.  No luck until he really started to use some elbow grease, nearly shooting it off his plate.  In spite of the hockey puck muffin, he liked the flavor combination in the Hollandaise sauce.  I nibbled on my quiche, which was okay, but nowhere near orgasmic.  And why was the dressing for the mixed greens salad on the other side of the quiche where the salad wasn’t?  I kept waiting for that amazing food face we both make when we happen upon a stellar dish to appear on his countenance but it never happened.  “Is it spectacular?” our server asked with a knowing smile.  We didn’t answer verbally as we were chewing and just nodded instead of telling the truth.   Our server also missed fine dining cues like the cloth napkin back on the table signifying completion and the more subtle turning of the fork.  Honestly?  It felt exactly like dining in a hotel restaurant which 90% of the time is an ill-advised encounter.

We exited and the valet even asked if we’d had a great time, to which we made kind of non-committal noises.  On the drive home, we tried to pinpoint what the problem was and all we could come up with was that we’d both entered with a sense of unease that was never quelled.  At first we thought that maybe we shouldn’t judge them on brunch alone and maybe should try dinner, but the more we talked about it, the less either of us wanted to go back at all.

Sorry, Canoe.  You are great for some, but you are just not our cup of tea.

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