table for hate.

Small plates or NW tapas make me mass agitated. Either go to a nice haute cuisine establishment where they understand multi course dining or go to the Palace and order the pork belly and have a martini and be done with it. Places like Lark are stupid because they presume their diners are going to smart enough to handle the situation correctly. For starters this style of ordering is annoying. When you’re getting a bunch of thai food it’s easy to eat family style. You get some bullshit phad thai, a curry, a vegetable dish, and then some other random thing that probably involves basil and chicken and then you’re done with it. But at Lark, which is presumably “upscale northwest” you have to consult your fellow diners, and you’re forced to say stupid things  like “what’s saba?” and “is clabber cream like creme fraiche” and other systematically obtuse phrases all in effort for unnecessary clarification. The amount of time spent on the menu is tiresome-  and ultimately you will not care and grow to resent long titles like “Bluebird Grain Farms farro.”

Because there are no obvious choices- no obligatory picks to round out a meal- you’re stuck trying to piece together a dinner from a bunch of little plates that cannot be shared in any respectable manner. The result if something like 10 dishes for 4 people that come out to the table with no sense of order or purpose. Wine pairing is impossible, and the whole event lacks the usual crescendo that is predicated entirely upon the arrival of the entree. Lark is like going to the movies and only getting shown the trailers.

All hating aside, Larks’s individual plates are delicious. I’m not hating on the food itself, it’s just the manner in which they are presented and the tyranny of choices that are so troubling. On the other hand, if you have an eating disorder and are doing key bumps in the bathroom- this IS the place for you.  No one will notice that you haven’t touched a thing with all the chaos involved with rearranging tiny plate after plate onto tables that dreamed of better times, and the lighting and table cloths will look brilliant with your dior shoes and last season’s marc jacobs dress.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.