Was pretty hyped to go to Fox and the Knife a couple of weeks ago for dinner on the end of May (had never been), having made reservations a month in advance with a note to the restaurant that it was for an anniversary (restaurant did reach out by text and asked what anniversary was being celebrated - it was a wedding one).
Got there on time and then things partially went off the rails.
Hostess was not at the entrance booth, a waitperson greeted us and seemed unaware that we had a reservation even though I told her. Futzed around with the screen quite a while then tried to seat us at a high top by the entrance in the bar area. I rejected that offer and asked for a table in the back. Waitperson then spent more minutes on the screen trying to figure it out and someone else, maybe the hostess, finally showed up and put us at a table in the back (although I am still pretty sure that they were treating us as walk ins).
Once settled, service was fine and efficient.
Perused the menu, ordered two nice Italian red wines to drink. Started with the ricotta and toast, good but pretty standard fare. Then the broccoli alla grillia “Caesar” salad. Loved the flavor and idea of this dish but I thought the execution was flawed. Essentially grilled broccoli pieces, tossed with tasty dressing and crunchy croutons. The florets and croutons were excellent but there were also pieces of stem included that were pretty…hard. Too hard IMO. Seriously needed to either have been cut more thinly and/or cooked longer.
Moving on to the main courses we split the malfaldini alla funghi (w/toasted farro, spring mushrooms, truffle butter) and the milanese di maiale (crispy pork, saffron aioli, honeycrisp apples).
The malfaldini was served lukewarm - it had to have been sitting somewhere for a while - and farro was not to be found anywhere on the plate. The mushrooms in the dish were very flavorful and the pasta itself was nicely toothsome. Still, the serving temperature and the lack of one of the listed ingredients brought down what could have been a very good dish of pasta.
Moving on to the pork, it was pounded super thin, breaded and fried nicely. Served super hot on a good smear of saffron aioli, covered with a large mound of a radicchio/mixed greens/thinly sliced honeycrisps. Quite good, easily the most successful plate of the night.
Time for dessert. But at this point things got weird again. Someone, maybe the manager, suddenly showed up, wished us Happy Anniversary (at the end of the meal??) and handed us two menus - the dinner menus for service that night, except that the words “Happy Anniversary” had been printed at the bottom of the page. I almost laughed out loud. It just seemed silly. What were we supposed to do with them? You know what would have been nice? A comped glass of a white bubbly. But keeping the menu would just remind me of the misses in the night’s meal.
Speaking of misses, we did decide to hang in there for an apple crostini with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, highly recommended by our server. It sounded good but again failed in execution: the flavor of the dish was good but the apples weren’t quite cooked enough - they were not completely tender. Additionally the crust was a bit thick - the edge where it was folded over itself was gummy due to not being completely baked. Lastly, the ice cream wat not served on the same plate as the crostini?? Instead it was in a separate dish. Huh?
So I don’t know if the kitchen/restaurant was having a bad night or what was going on - the restaurant was busy but didn’t appear to be slammed. I had expected a better and more refined dining experience based on the reviews and press that Fox and the Knife has received but left pretty disappointed overall.
