During an intense downpour, the Parsnipity family ventured out last night in the March cold to check out The Cornerstone, a newish restaurant from the chef of Yume Ga Aru Kara in the former R.F. O’Sullivan’s space. Braving ankle-deep puddles, we parked in the Sullivan’s Tire lot as the website notes is permitted, and found ourselves in the warm, dark, friendly and somewhat compact bar space. The menu is described as New American, with Asian and Hawaiian influences.
Nobody was drinking, apart from an incredibly sweet coconut pineapple mocktail concoction, so we started with wings and a scallop appetizer. The wings were very good with an excellent Bleu cheese sauce on the side. The scallop appetizer was 3 individual preparations of one large scallop each. Can you picture us cutting each scallop into quarters and sharing? Yup, that’s how we roll. All tasty, some of the sauces I would say overwhelmed the scallops and were too sweet- this proved a theme.
Our sprouts split a portion of seafood scampi with linguine, which they gobbled up. I had the tuna steak frites- a generous portion of tuna, but served with 3 sauces, 2 of which were oddly sweet, and very thick beer batter crust which clashed horribly with the tuna. I was happy to scrape the crust off, but the tuna was not seasoned at all and needed salt and flavor generally once the crust was removed. The arugula salad and fries that came with it were excellent, and I would absolutely get this dish again because it was a beautiful piece of fish, especially for the price, but I would ask for it to be simply grilled as a hoppy beer batter with added paprika (or something indistinguishable that made the batter red) does not go with tuna. The same hoppy beer batter was similarly a detraction from my husband’s fish and chips, and I also think their oil is not hot enough as the batter was a bit gluey, and his fish was also egregiously underseasoned.
Service was friendly and solicitous- I couldn’t bear to tell them their batters need work. When we declined dessert, they gave our sprouts each a mochi. The value was excellent- we had quite a lot of seafood for a very reasonable price. I think they will work out their batter kinks, and/or we will try other things on the menu. The actual menu presented differed a bit from what’s on the website, so don’t get your heart set on anything before stopping in. But do stop in!
(Hell yeah, I’m competitive.)
