Thursday, January 06, 2011

Daniel Boulud's DBGB

Part of my daily routine is to follow food-related news, via Twitter or other news or blog sources. From these articles, I occasionally list down restaurants that I have to visit at some point in time. Typically they are in cities where I know I'll visit in the next one or two years.

When I first read about Daniel Boulud's newest casual dining concept, I excitedly put that on my list. I've enjoyed all his restaurants in New York and his restaurant in Las Vegas. So I knew his latest, DBGB, would be a real treat.

We went there twice. The first time was for a late afternoon meal at the bar area. This first experience was really enjoyable. The setting and the food surpassed our expectations, as Boulud usually does at his restaurants.

For the second visit, we dined in the main dining area. The food was still excellent, but the service lacked and the host, especially, completely appalled us. For a casual setting, he was stiffly dressed in a suit - as though he wanted to work at Daniel but he got rejected. He was pretty rude to our table in pressuring and pushing us to hurry up, eat, and leave because he wanted to sit another party in our table. For example, he vigorously and blatantly showed the busboys his wrap-it-up gesture in front of our table as his signal to them (and us) to clean out table as fast as possible, even though we were still wrapping up our last conversation. There are ways to do this, and he knew none of proper polite ones.

Because of him, it makes me less eager to go back again. The food was excellent and enjoyable, but when I go out to eat I'm also looking for that overall experience with quality service, especially when the prices are higher than a cheap eats place.

Place your cursor above "Notes" to read a little more about the food photos:
Check out my Flickr album if you can't see the slideshow here.

2 comments:

guam foodie said...

i still want to go here when i go to nyc. now i know to just sit at the bar. haha

Angela said...

Do it! I highly recommend the burgers and the sausages. He has a great draft beer selection, too!