Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Warung Cafe...

I wanted to write this as a plea to the owners/management of the Warung Cafe on 4th & Main. We recently ate here and I really want to like it and I'd love to have another great restaurant in the neighborhood.

We ordered a bunch of dishes because Warung is a tapas style pan-asian restaurant. Not a bad idea as you get to try lots of different options and a good option for a group. But it only works if the food is great.

The mongolian beef was delicious, as were the crispy chicken potstickers.
The cold peanut noodle salad was bland, kind of like cold ramen noodles with a drizzling of peanut sauce. Not very exciting.

We also ordered tofu green curry. The green curry sauce was fine but it had big chunks of raw tofu that had no flavor and seemed to have been tossed in at the last minute.

Also the organic tofu seaweed salad was bad It had about a cup of dried black shredded seaweed on top of traditional salad greens. It just tasted terrible. It was as if there was no thought behind the recipe or the style, at best sort of thrown together.

I ordered green tea. I got a cup of hot water with a bigelow tea bag. C'mon, if you're trying to be a stylish asian restaurant, how about a nice little tea pot, with real green tea, a nice tea cup, make an effort I say.

We ended up spending about $55 for dinner. For what we got, I felt I paid too much. We are downtown locals, we go out to eat and we eat at the other local restaurants a couple of times a week. Warung has to do better in my opinion.

The ambience is nice, great light fixtures, a good vibe, the music was nice and the service was friendly and quick. It's just the food that needs a little help. I offer this as constructive criticism for what could be a great option. I am reluctant to go again though and that's a bad sign for a restaurant still struggling for its footing.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

green tea is japanese. =]

Anonymous said...

I've been wondering if this place was any good--now I know! Thanks for the post!!