CincyEats

I want to let you in on my view of restaurant week.  It isn’t a time to go to your favorite place to eat and order your standard entree. I know we are all guilty of this. This is the perfect time to go to the new place you have been meaning to try but don’t want to spend the money or are a little scared you might not like it. It is a time for the restaurant to convince you to be a regular. They want to see you walk through those doors again and again.  It appears some restaurants got this concept and some didn’t.

Our first stop was at Tinks.  Jess had picked this place because neither one of us had ever been. It is on a very cute street off of Ludlow in Clifton. The space is adorable. It is not fancy, but is a place that you want to stay and share a bottle of wine and listen to music.  Now the food for us was not stellar. We did have a later reservation for a weeknight, 8:45. I personally don’t think that should alter the quality of the food, but sadly it might have. The restaurant week menu had a decent amount of options. So lets just get down to business.

First course for Jess was their mussels, the winning dish of the night. Earlier in the night a friend told us that she goes to Tinks specifically for the mussels. There is a reason, they are delicious. There are little bits of panchetta, some tomato and green onion.  All that mixed with some cream. What’s not to love! You will want to eat the broth with a spoon, or at least ask for more bread. Our only complaint is that we wanted more. Not sure if it was a smaller portion because of restaurant week or not.  I should note this is the only dish we finished.

all gone!

My first course was the Tinks Salad. It was a light salad, nothing really special. The dressing was good. The perfect amount for the first couple of bites, after that the dressing was gone.

For an entree,  I had the Wild Mushroom Garganelli. The question of the night was, where are the mushrooms? This dish was lacking in so many ways.  The whole thing was very bland. The pasta was very dry. The congealed cheese on top makes me wonder how long it was sitting under a heat lamp.

Jess had the Grilled Atlantic Salmon. All I can say is that it was well and he wanted medium rare. I will try and get him to post a comment with more detail.

at least it looks pretty

Dessert consisted of a tasting of chocolate creme brulee, berries with fresh cream and maybe flan (I can’t remember). I do remember that there was much discussion at the table about the creme brulee.  I thought it was horrible, granted, I don’t really like chocolate.  My reasoning is that creme brulee is creamy and silky smooth. This was gritty. Jess kept saying if they called it brownie pie it would have been delicious. That is great, but they called it creme brulee! Moving on, the berries and cream for me where the star, light and fluffy. As for the maybe flan, all I can say is, not memorable.

The long and the short of it is that we will go back and get some mussels. The meal was not that good, but one good dish can really leave an impression. I wish they would have stepped it up a bit, but I guess they really didn’t have to.

Stay tuned for our restaurant week meal at Jags.