Everyone's a critic.In a slow year for notable restaurant openings in Chicago, it seemed every major restaurant review section in the city glommed onto Sepia as the new 'orgasmic' dining experience 'guaranteed to blow you away'.
So after falling prey to the hype, checking out the menu online and surprisingly getting a reservation (supposedly hard to do) through OpenTable, we ventured out recently to hobnob with the trendistas.
It didn't go well, and we're not hard to please.
I'm a sucker for any menu that even remotely resembles Avec's, a somewhat comparable restaurant just around the corner. Give me a menu with small plates consisting of various types of game/beef with interesting sauce accompaniments, and I'm in hook, line and sinker. It works as a haute cuisine sampling extravaganza. I came from a small town where buffets were fine dining. An ounce of that still lingers. Also, I'm a former fatty, and even former fatties still want to eat everything that offered. So after seeing the decor and the menu, things were looking good. Perfectly happy. Not giddy, but happy.
And then the meal started.
There's a reason people eat out. They go out to eat good food done in interesting ways with flavor combinations that don't immediately evoke the familiar or staid, flavors that meld into something transcending the list of ingredients. Pretty simple and restaurant 101.
Sepia does that, but ever-so-slightly. A chef gets into a danger zone when he creates a menu he thinks people will like as opposed to what he/she likes. Chef Kendal Duque has an impressive list of stops in the culinary world, but the food only seems to perfunctorily fulfill the definition of 'New American, locally grown and seasonally-driven with a Spanish flair' cuisine, terms so ubiquitous in the restaurant world as to make me sleepy.
After the meal, I immediately got the feeling that the concept so excited them, but the execution and practical application of the concept left them with a feeling of being stuck with it and they're now just plowing through.
Let's begin.
Word to servers. When a customer asks for a wine recommendation, don't go directly to the most expensive bottles. It's bad form. Given that, the wine list is eclectic in a good way. We had a Chateauneuf du Pape that was spectacular. And the whiskey cocktail with basil is worth a return trip to the bar. Avoid the much-ballyhooed blueberry lemonade. Meh.
The flatbread revolution has begun and we relented. Bacon with peaches and lamb sausage with tomatoes. Bacon - soggy. Lamb - good. Sepia's been open six weeks. The flatbread was $5 upon opening. $6 now. Trivial but not a good sign in the sense they, most likely, saw their customers were loading up on them and the small plates to the detriment of the large plate cash cows. Six weeks in and guest check average is already a factor?
Small plates - rabbit and pork. Rabbit was a muddled mess with peas, tomatoes (an apparent staple - it's seasonal, you know) and a Reisling reduction. The Reisling was lost in the butter while the rabbit lost it's signature flavor as well. The pork rillette (like a paté) was served in a preserve jar, hatch lid and all ("look, it's so whimsical!") with a fig preserve and pistachios. The pork was passable but the fig preserve was a dry, sticky mess. And the brittle seems misplaced. The lemon-sage bread pudding was charred on top and a runny (and I mean Runny) scrambled-egg mess in the middle. How do you screw up bread pudding?
Then we bolted.
Left with a choice of spending an additional $100 on such fair to middling options and bolting, we chose the latter. And here's why (aside from the food).
Our service was pretty terrible. After the aforementioned wine recommendation faux-pas, our server - who seemed nice - was a bit off. I was twice left with no silverware or plate to eat the small plates. Our bottled water was consistently refilled with tap water (no big deal but we did purchase the water for a reason). Our busser routinely kept wanting to take food not finished. We ordered the potatoes in duck fat and never received them. We ordered double espressos and received singles (which were pretty mediocre).
And once the restaurant was full, it was insanely loud.
There. I've become a nit-picky, little food critic bitch.
Sepia's only been open six weeks, so maybe things will get ironed out. But the concept makes me skeptical. People go out for a reason. Sepia's trying to not offend by catering to the downtown business crowd and all their douche-bagginess. That's the problem. They're catering. If a chef makes food that he/she likes instead of catering, success will follow. And if it doesn't, at least they went out on their own terms. That reluctance to challenge may ultimately be their demise. Or at least until someone else opens up a comparatively boring 'next-big-thing'.
