Feeling Blu

B decided it was time to inject a little culture into my life and bought tickets to see Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice at the Cutler Majestic Theatre last night. I figured it was an excuse to try a new restaurant, so why not?

After doing a very quick and strictly location based search on Open Table, we ended up at Blu, which is the restaurant at the Sports Club LA inside the Ritz Carlton. (I still want to call it the new Ritz, even though the old Ritz has been the Taj for many years.)

The restaurant is on the 4th floor, and appears to also have a snack bar too. I guess this is all part of being part of the gym. And I probably wouldn’t have been so surprised if I had done any research at all into this place. (I had no idea it was at the Ritz or associated with the gym.) I did find it odd that you have to walk through the cafeteria-like snack bar to get to the hostess stand. Or host stand, I should say, since we were greeted by a man – a man whose tie was about 6” too short. (B could not get over this, nor let it go. Every time the poor guy walked by, he kept urging me to turnaround. Yeah B, I only need to see it once.)

We were coldly greeted, but promptly seated. The host reminded me of one of those “I’m so much better than you” hostesses that are always depicted in TV shows that take place in New York City. I find this odd, because I’ve never actually experienced such a hostess when dining in New York City. Maybe he was preparing for one of the Yankees to show up (based on the crowd of people in Yankees hats and shirts outside the hotel, one could only assume that they were staying at the Ritz while in town to play the Red Sox), and his only resource for how to behave was Sex and the City marathons on E! But anyway…

Once seated, we were very promptly greeted by our server, whose name I do not recall, but was perfectly lovely – polite, friendly, and attentive without being overbearing. B ordered a Hendricks martini and I opted for the ginger mojito. We also ordered an appetizer – spicy mussels in pepperoncini broth.

I love pepperoncini. I eat them like potato chips. Seriously, I’ll fix myself a bowl and snack on them. That being said, other than the boiled pepperoncini that was in the bowl with the mussels (which I ate), there wasn’t any pepperoncini flavor. Nor was there any spice.

Don’t get me wrong, the mussels were actually quite good. They just weren’t spicy, and they didn’t have the advertised pepperoncini flavor. If I were the chef, I might choose to describe them differently.

We each ordered a salad and an entrée – B with his typical Caesar salad and swordfish dinner, and me with the watercress and endive salad and the pan roasted rainbow trout dinner.

My salad was really good – watercress, endive, bleu cheese, candied walnuts and gala apples dressed with (if I recall correctly) a honey vinaigrette. Or maybe it was a champagne vinaigrette. I honestly can’t remember because I think I almost ordered another salad that had whatever dressing my salad didn’t have. The trout came with carrots, spinach and Brussels sprouts, sprinkled with some crispy bacon bits. It was the Brussels sprouts that sold me. I enjoy a nice rainbow trout, but I love Brussels sprouts and will pretty much order anything that is served with them.

The portion of fish was smaller than I’m used to, but it tasted good. (In fact, the whole entrée was a pretty small portion.) The other parts of the plate on the other hand… The carrots tasted like carrots. Fair enough, that’s what I expect carrots to taste like. But the spinach tasted like garlic, the Brussels sprouts tasted like oil, and the bacon tasted like lemon. I didn’t really taste the lemon anywhere else – it was like the bacon was marinated in the lemon. It literally drowned the flavor of the bacon.

For a restaurant that touts its affiliation with a gym, and even boasts “LA Sports Club approved menu selections” on its menu (a mere three – two appetizers and one entrée), there was a pool of oil left on my plate that was big enough to probably re-cook my entire dinner and still have leftover oil. Didn’t feel very healthy to me (although my lips are no longer chapped).

Since we still had some time to kill before the play, we ordered dessert. Usually we split one, but I couldn’t decide so we each ordered one – the cinnamon crème brulee with biscotti and fresh berries for B, and the Kahlua tiramisu for me.

The cinnamon crème brulee was delicious – the perfect amount of cinnamon flavor, and dusted with a sprinkle of powdered sugar. The biscotti were adorable! The smallest cookies I have ever seen. They were like Teddy Graham sized biscotti. Simply precious. And the fresh berries? I mean the single strawberry garnish? It was almost in season, it was so good.

The tiramisu was fine… nothing special. I know Kahlua is a coffee flavored liqueur, but there was no distinct Kahlua flavor in the dessert, just coffee. I think they tried to make it special, and just couldn’t pull it off. Maybe a Bailey’s Irish Cream tiramisu would have been better – a complimentary vs. a similar flavor to what is already in the dessert.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad meal. We ate everything that was put in front of us, and the service was really prompt and good without being rushed. It just didn’t feel like a Ritz Carlton meal. And it certainly didn’t feel like a $121 meal (not including tax, liquor and tip).

(And in case you are wondering, the ginger mojito was quite yummy…)