restaurant week.

my roommates and i decided to take advantage of the 3 course for $25 menu for seattle restaurant week at avila restaurant in wallingford. avila is a perfect example of how front of the house and service really have an effect on how the eater perceives their food. unfortunately, avila's service left a bad taste in all of our mouths, even after 3 delicious courses.
we arrived with 1 minute to spare before our 7:30 reservation, and were told that our table wasn't ready. we were flexible, and the friendly bartender kept us happy with free champagne (and refills!) at the bar. normally, free champagne would cajole me, and it did for the first part of the meal. the waitress took our order and the wine, bread, and appetizers came out without a hitch. the appetizers were by far the strongest course of the meal. roomie a had the mussels (yuck!) and i was even brave enough to try one. as a fishlover, however, she said they were awesome and dipped some of the left over bread into the housemade vermouth and green garlic at the bottom of the dish. roomie m had the pan fried asparagus, which were tender but still crisp and super flavorful. my appetizer was a really yummy goat cheese souffle with greens. i was really pleased with my choice.
after that, however, the service really went downhill. our entrees took almost 40 minutes to come out. as we watched people who had ordered after us get their entrees, we wondered if we had been forgotten. i'm an avid top chef fan, i know that sometimes a course gets messed up in the kitchen, and i'm totally ok with it. however, the lateness of our entrees was never acknowledged or appologized for by our server. in fact, she never even came over the refill our water! luckily i was in good company with good wine, or this situation could have been really miserable.
i had an artichoke and endive crostada that had an amazingly flaky and sweet crust. it was a well-rounded and hearty vegetarian dish, that i was completely satisfied with. the girls both had the halibut, which i'm told was well-cooked but poorly dressed. the menu explanations were brief, and with no guidance from our waitress the girls found their plates with two mystery balls (which turned out to be breaded and fried manilla clam meatballs) and a foreign green liquid (still not entirely sure of contents). now, i'm all about trying new foods. however, i would definitely like to know that those foods are before trying them. the girls were great sports, but i could tell they were both disappointed in the cohesiveness of their halibut dish.
we finished with a dessert that definitely made up for the silly halibut. we had one of each offering and rotated a warm malted chocolate souffle, spiced bread pudding, and chilled rhubarb soup. in my opinion, the soup was the star. tart rhubarb is a personal favorite of my pallatte, and this one was paired with a angel-food-like puffy cake in the middle and topped with white chocolate creme. the souffle would be best described as "one-note." it was tasty, but nothing i've never tasted before and portioned substantially larger than it needed to be. the bread pudding was really flavorful and came with a tart yogurt gelato (yet another meal component we had to ask about) from fainting goat gelato right down the street. this definitely spiked an interest in me to blog some local gelato in the very near future!
all in all, avila is a place of good food and innovative ingredients. however, something as simple as lack of water and spotty service really overshadowed the food. i think i'll venture out and try a lot more restaurants before i return to avila.
photo cred to www.avilaseattle.com.