A bad dining experience usually doesn't start with ordering a beer. Although wine, beer, décor and service all figure into my final analysis of a restaurant's worth, for me it all flows from the food. But sometimes, like last week at Aquaknox, a simple thing like a pre-dinner brew can foreshadow everything that's going to go down at the table.
Aquaknox is a new, high-end place — with additional outlets in Las Vegas and Atlanta — serving "Global Water Cuisine" at the just-opened Westin Hotel on Courtney Campbell Causeway. The food is pricey, the decor is a beautiful combination of flowing shapes, glittering bead curtains and subtle lighting effects that shift between placid ocean colors, and the view tries to evoke the watery atmosphere as best as a first floor spot sandwiched between highways can. Which is why the beer list is baffling.
Between our two servers, we finally determine that all the restaurant serves is Anheuser-Busch products: Bud, Bud Light, Heineken, Michelob, even Shocktop. Not knocking the Bud man, but with a thick wine list and giant raw bar, I'd hope for a selection of beer that — at the very least — tries. Just a little. I should have saved my wishing for the food.
Aquaknox's menu is dominated by seafood, from that extensive raw bar to a wide variety of fish. Even there, though, the chintzy beer list is mimicked: oysters aren't delineated by region or style, and fish are largely common, world-spanning choices readily available year-round, with no sense of origin or place.
That said, an appetizer of raw toro tuna doused in bright shoyu and accented by tiny, tart grapefruit segments highlights the potential of excellent fish. But more seafood in a competent broth flavored with fresh thyme suffers from poor preparation, almost every bite betraying the sandy grit of uncleaned clams.
Carpaccio is a simple enough dish when done right, as long as the beef is top notch. Hard to tell the quality of the meat here at Aquaknox, though, as the entire plate is blitzed with a baffling amount of Dijon mustard, utterly destroying the delicate slices of beef and overpowering the drizzle of balsamic, shaved parmigiano and dainty capers.
Maybe covering up the steak was a good idea, I decide, after the first bite of Aquaknox's grilled ribeye. The restaurant touts its "all certified Angus" beef, which is always a sticky point. Angus is a marketing term, not a sign of quality. You want quality, buy prime, especially if you're charging almost $40 for a slab of steak. My ribeye was so dry, so lacking in the luscious marbling and fat that is the joy of this cut, that I was forced to pick it up by the bone just to examine it. Yep, looks like a ribeye. Tastes like a low-end strip.
It also could have used some of the salt that the kitchen used to destroy thin filets of flounder stuffed with a bounty of jumbo lump crab. Tasting the cylinders of fish by itself is fine, but downing a forkful of crab has me reaching desperately for a Bud Light like a slug in a salt flat.
Glazed grouper in a broth of soy and lemongrass is better, the fish nicely cooked and — finally — seasoned correctly. The relief of tasting a dish that's almost accomplished almost makes me overlook the too-sweet punch of sweet soy or the gummy, overcooked udon nested underneath the fish. Relief is a comforting sauce.
By the time desserts come, I'm primed for disappointment. But wait, not only are these sweet treats free from problems, they're actually good! A deconstructed smore built on a foundation of banana bread and coated in gooey chocolate ganache is fabulous. The apple tart is standard stuff, but the fruit is tart and just crisp and the puff pastry is crackling and barely sweet.
But then the bill comes and I'm struck by the economic troubles that have had me — and most folks — heading more for comfort food and cheap eats than splurge restaurants like this. Get a bad taco or plate of pad Thai and you're out lunch money for the day. Have a bad meal at a place like Aquaknox, and you've likely blown a month's dining budget with little to show beyond a couple of empty bottles of Bud and a bad taste in your mouth.
This article appears in Mar 25-31, 2009.