There is absolutely nothing I hate more than a dull dining experience. It always leaves me in a shocking mood that no amount of post dinner revelry can reverse. Unfortunately for me (and my dining companions) I had such an experience on Saturday night. Two days later I'm still in a bad mood about it.
We chose to have dinner at Grappa's Cellar, primarily because it was hosting a concert by "One and a Half Sopranos" (aka Elizabeth Merendino and Joyce Wong). The concert was excellent and Grappa's has a good layout for that sort of thing. But, the food...
We started with some bread and olive oil / balsamic vinegar. The bread had been left out a little too long after being sliced and was starting to harden, and while it was claimed that there were two varieties, neither had any particularly striking flavour. Then the starter came - a caprese salad of mozzarella, tomato and basil, or, in this case, mozzarella and tomato. There was one piece of basil decorating the top but I'm not sure that counts. The tomatoes were good but other than that, the flavours were, well, dull, even with the significant amount of pepper that they'd covered it in.
A friend at drinks afterwards reprimanded me for having anything other than the pizza. Maybe my view of the experience would have been different if I'd had one of the pizzas but, at the time, I wanted pasta and so chose a dish with prawns, artichokes and a "special" tomato sauce. On the plus side, the pasta was perfectly al dente. On the less than plus side, I lost the will to live half way through eating it - even the prawns were dull and flavourless.
Perhaps a little bit pernickety but it bugged me that the pasta had been decorated with a large piece of flat leaf parsley stuck upside down on top of the dish. It just suggested that the chef himself is a little bit bored of the food....
Grappa's Cellar
Jardine House
1 Connaught Place
Central
Tel: 2521 2322