Holed up for a drizzly Spring Break Xzibit would not touch w/ a stretch Escalade, made drearier by the flight of the cinetrix to that hoedown in Austin. It did afford the chance to eat a couple of meals.
Friday night, we went to Parish, on the recommendation of a friend. I wanted to like it, and I do hear good things about the sammiches they sell out of the faux grocery in the basement. The restaurant was, unfortunately, the closest I've ever come to having a meal resemble a seance summoning Delta Burke. The food was shoulderpaddy -- big, vaguely architectural, and not as tasty as should be. I started with what was called a "savory crawfish and chicken sausage cheesecake." What arrived was a giant wedge, vaguely cheescakelike in texture, with a layer of sausagy/crawfishy stuff between the two halves of the wedge. It was unfinishable. The oysters the Cinetrix had were liquorless, and clung to their shells in a disconcerting way (not at the point where they have to be cut out, but a sort of all-over adhesion. My main was a perfectly cromulent, if uninsipred braised pork shank -- in keeping with the general aesthetic of bigness, it was presented in a bone-in Flinstone style. I had expected a section, like what is sometimes called "pork osso bucco," but this was the whole damn leg, or roughly what you would serve if you had the proverbial pig too good to eat all at once. The accompaniment was vile -- I think they called it a tomato-garlic tarte tatin, but what it appeared to be was a lump of sweetened canned tomatoes on a piece of toaster streudel, with whole garlics strewn absently around.
I don't usually talk about the room, but the room would be the reason to go, if there were a reason to go. It's in what appears to be a brand new building, and they have "distressed" the walls for that Old South feel. But the overall effect is stumbling onto the set of a lost Andrew Blake hommage to Gone With the Wind. Giant chandeliers that look as if they are repurposed go-go dancer cages, other chandeliers that are I'm not really a waitress red, and a giant statue of Adam and Eve in the middle of the dining room. The sense that sidework would include fluffing does not make for a great dining experience. ATLiens who are in the know indicated the food was not the point, but rather to be seen, and the heels and iPhone concentrations suggested a sceney scene, one imagines that even the most fabulous Atlantan would enjoy better food than we had.
*A ref to the song, not the novel, or the campaign.
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