79. Hook

The second stop on my magical mystery tour of food was Hook. Two gal pals and I went for lunch today to take advantage of the restaurant week deals. We were hoping that Hook would be one of those restaurants that works the same menu during restaurants week as it does the rest of the year. Sadly, Hook is not one of those restaurants. Having eaten there before (and very recently), I was looking forward to the crudos, which were suspiciously absent from menu. The one raw item on the menu was the Tuna Tartar, which Michelle ordered and confirmed to be delicious. Our other appetizers were the Beet Salad for Melanie, which had an ice cream scoop sized ball of goat cheese right in the middle (always a plus), and the Grilled Calamari for me. My calamari was good, a little too charred on the outside but otherwise cooked well. The truly offensive thing was the giant mound of mashed potatoes served along side my tiny squid. Not only did the mashed potatoes make no sense, they were stone cold. Not stone cold foxy, just stone cold. And cold mashed potatoes are no cold pizza, they are just plain bad.

The main courses were better—Melanie had Michelle both had some tasty and simple fish dishes. Enjoyable even though Michelle’s was served with inexplicable cold mashed potatoes. I almost asked the waiter if they were supposed to be cold, but he was in a restaurant week frenzy and I’m sure not interested in taking my slightly passive aggressive question. My main course was unfortunately another disappointment. I ordered the Tuna Confit Sandwich, which I couldn’t quite figure out but when the waiter assured me it was delicious I went for it. And the truth is, if there was Football Confit on the menu I probably would have ordered it. What came out was a tuna salad sandwich. And not really a good one at that. All in all disappointing, though the sweet potato fries were tasty. We all three finished with the chocolate hazelnut cake, which appeared to just be five layers of Nutella in different stages of frozen-ness. You can’t really go wrong with Nutella, but as Melanie said, it takes a lot for her not to finish a desert and she left a third of it on her plate. Michelle finished hers, but claimed she was hypnotized by the chocolate and that it wasn’t all that fantastic anyway.

All in all, not the best experience but I will give Hook a pass since I did go during lunch and during restaurant week. I think I’ll go back sometime and sit up at the bar. It looks like a place that would be great to start work as a cougar-in-training…