After seeing Element Fresh clean up at the Beijinger 2009 Restaurant Awards I decided to finally see for myself what all the hype was about.
And I was totally unimpressed.
Seriously, folks... are we so desperate for "American Style" dining that we get this lathered up over what would qualify as a medium-quality, mid-range cafe in most American cities?
Our experience follows:
After sitting down, we waited roughly 10 minutes for a waiter to even wander by. Finally we went with the standard lung-top shout of "FUYUAN" to get some attention.
Ordered cocktails, appetizers and dinner. After about 15 minutes our appetizers arrived.
My friend had the Manhattan Clam Chowder. EF goes with the "tomato" base versus cream base, and it was very good. We both thought it was quite tasty.
I had the hummus. I've read that its excellent and wanted to give it a shot. Unfortunately, I found it to be completely bland and devoid of flavor. It didn't taste like chick peas, it didn't taste like olive oil or lemon or anything. It simply tasted like nothing. To be fair, there was plenty of bread and veggies served with it. I'd have gnoshed on those happily except...
2 minutes after our appetizer arrived, the mains showed up.
Mind you, we still hadn't even received our cocktails.
I had the lamb kebab. It was fine though, like the hummus, decidedly lacking in flavor. Given that I now had apps and mains all at once, and both tasted like nothing, I unwrapped it and hit it with a layer of hummus and salt/pepper, which actually made it fairly tasty. It was accompanied by some kind of cauliflower slaw that wasn't bad, but was literally a serving of roughly one tablespoon.
My friend had the tuna, which was served in a sweet/spicy thai sauce, with a side of pad-thai-esque noodles. Unlike my flavorless dinner, this went too far in the other direction. The flavor of the tuna (not a delicate fish to begin with) was completely buried in the avalanche of sauce it was smothered with. And while I know Pad Thai has a peanut/coconut base, this tasted like spaghetti cooked in GIF. Most of it went uneaten.
The cocktails were decent, arriving roughly midway through dinner. I liked the addition of lemongrass to my friend's mojito... it worked surprisingly well.
Bottom line, I really don't get it. Service was lousy, the food was mediocre, and yet it was packed with laowai, just like us, plunking down RMB400 for a meal that'd cost $30 back in a comparable setting back in the US.
I left, scratching my head. There are so many solid western restaurants nearby that I don't get the current obsession with this place...
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