<\/a>Lollipop up close<\/p><\/div>\n
So as I mentioned earlier in the post, when we received the menu, the waiter merely called it the “Restaurant Week menu” and left without any additional explanation. On the top left hand corner of the menu, there was a small box stating: “Three Course Prix Fixe $24.07 & $37.00”\u00a0 The two prices were on separate lines, and the $24.07 had a symbol next to it that looked like an egg with legs and a beak. When Josh and I saw the box, we assumed the prices were for lunch and dinner, even though RW dinner is $35, not $37. We just thought they used their regular menu rather than printing separate RW menus, since it didn’t say Restaurant Week anywhere on the menu. We didn’t realize until halfway through our meal that only items on the menu with the egg symbol were included as part of the $24.07 prix fixe; all the other items without the egg would be charged ath the $37 prix fixe rate.<\/p>\n
We only realized this because the waiter explained the difference to the table next to us, and only because they specifically asked what the symbol meant. I didn’t pay attention to the symbol when we were ordering, and I was furious that no one explained to us how the menu was set up. It was a blatant omission in my opinion, and we had chosen items from the more expensive prix fixe without knowing we had done so. At least we figured out before we got the bill, because the sticker shock might have made for an awkward conversation with the waiter. In the end, since we had chosen one “egg symbol” item and one non “egg symbol” item from each course, we were charged $24.07 for one meal and $37.00 for the other meal. Quite a markup, in my opinion, and over 50% more than we intended to spend on one of the meals.<\/p>\n
The items that didn’t have the egg symbol were obviously the pricier\/fancier dishes – the pretzel crusted crab cake and the cavatelli and short rib dish. The only reason that I didn’t argue with the waiter about his lack of explanation regarding the menu was that I might still have ordered the crab cake and the cavatelli and short rib had I known about the price supplement. Those were the most attractive dishes on the menu, not knowing that they would also be the worst dishes of our meal. But, of course, hindsight is 20\/20.<\/p>\n
However, when we were deciding on the appetizer course, Josh and I debated over ordering either watermelon salad or the pastrami salmon, another David Burke signature. The watermelon salad won out in the end, but what if we had ordered the pastrami salmon, which didn’t have the egg symbol next to it? Combine that with our steamed mussel entree, which did have the egg symbol, what would they have charged us? My guess is the more expensive $37, though perhaps if we had a conflicting order, then our waiter might finally have spoken up about the different prix fixe prices. I really don’t know, but I definitely felt kind of cheated and misled.<\/p>\n
Overall, even without the sting of knowing that we had spent a lot more on what we expected to be a reasonable Restaurant Week lunch, we were pretty disappointed with the food at David Burke Townhouse. The bill just added insult to injury. There were definitely some bright moments – the bread was fantastic, the watermelon salad was simple and well composed, and the coconut broth and couscous in the steamed mussel dish was just delightful. However, the other dishes were good in concept but poorly executed. The hot strawberry shortcake sundae was another highlight, but the cheesecake lollipops were not our thing and not worth the extra supplement, in our opinion. Considering that an order is priced at $18 a la carte, and one tree has eight lollipops on it, that’s $2.25 per two-bite lollipop. Pretty steep I think. In the end, the meal was just mediocre, and I probably wouldn’t go back. And yes, we did tip the waiter 20% of the bill even though we were pretty upset about the situation. Like I said, I tried to justify it in my head that I probably still would have ordered the same things, and I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn’t intentionally being misleading. But lesson learned: when in doubt about the menu or about weird symbols, ask first before ordering!<\/p>\n
David Burke Townhouse<\/a>
\n133 East 61st St. between Park and Lexington Ave.
\nNew York, NY<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I know this post is pretty late considering Restaurant Week ended on Labor Day but David Burke Townhouse regularly participates in RW, so hopefully people will still find my comments somewhat useful. I had an early summer Friday from work so Josh and I met up for a RW lunch at David Burke Townhouse on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[331,348,324,323,308,183,87,171,96,311,38,252],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5585"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5585"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5603,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5585\/revisions\/5603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}