Yeah, this is a bit of a delayed post but Friday I was hungover and we were away for the weekend at the in-laws so I was a bit out of pocket. I did have a great round of gold Saturday in arctic conditions... anywho...
Thursday night we had some "big hitters" up from New York and decided to take them to the just opened Church and Main restaurant which is surprisingly enough, located on the corner of Church Street and Main Street in Burlington (the old Smokejack's). Now, it is never a good idea to go to new joints up here. The service is generally confused and slow, the food is sloppy, and the whole thing is generally found somewhere between work in progress and disaster. So why would I take NYC banker guys there knowing this? Because those punks took me to PJ Clarkes for a "fancy" dinner the last time I was in the city. Payback motherf****s!!!
Well, first off the new space is actually pretty well put together. The decor is like most mid-scale in the area but they did move the bar out of the odd nook it used to fill and into a more open space along the wall in the front of the room. We had a decent size party of 7 and were seated in the VIP booth. Apparently VIP stands for Very Impish People as we were jammed into a pretty small table. There was barely any room for the food and the wine was place on another table we had to reach over to. The waitress came over and through slightly broken English took our drink order. This is where we pitched her a slider for strike two... the first bottle we ordered was apparently no longer available. This was supposed to be their first night open to the public... probably should not be running out of wine? Anyway, we ordered a few others and they were all not bad, ranging from nothing special but nothing terrible to pretty good.
For chow we ordered a bunch of apps. The calamari was rubbery. The fried pickles were spears which is odd but they were ok. The lobster risotto was ok, the olives ok. The cheese plate was ok... needed a menu so we could tell what we were eating. The fried rice and cheese balls were pretty good. I liked the tuna tartar tacos. Some folks thought there was too much shell but I found it to not be a problem and it tasted good as did the fish.
The menu is still a little raw. There was not one main course I was particularly interested in. For medium plates they had fried chicken and waffles. I should have ordered that, people really liked it and it looked solid. They also have lots of burgers... thank goodness, there are not enough places locally that specialize in burgers!!! Well, I am the sucker and ordered one. It was a little rare but the bun was good, the meat was ok, and the blue cheese and fried onions were good. I liked it fine. For desert I had grapefruit sorbet, it was nothing special.
Overall the choices are unspectacular but the space is ok, the food is ok, the service was fine, and the prices are like old Smokejacks. Like the previous incarnation it will most likely be put begrudgingly into the rotation. I am hoping brunch will be a hit, 1 thumb sideways... pending!
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