09/13/09

Amazing food, decent ambiance

by ptcrpsnt

In terms of top notch Seattle restaurants, Crush is one of the finest. Crush has a very inspired and memorable menu, diverse cuisines, superb service, and a great wine list. At the same time, its modish seats are not perfectly comfortable and the location doesn't offer the most phenomenal view. Great place for a special date but not the best location / ambiance for a *real* special date (aka Anniversaries, Valentine's, etc.)

• Pros: Creative menu, great service, delicious
• Cons: Seating / view is slightly uncomfortable distracting

06/20/09

great handmade pasta

by tbellevue

We were here for dinner last month and the food was great for the most part. My seabass was on the salty side. The best dish was the pasta (very small portion-3 bites), hand made and delightful touch with the caviar. The samples that were brought out were nice. Staff could work on being more classy (hostess had extremely low-breast out summer dress) for this high end dining experience.

• Pros: creative combination of courses, beautiful arrangement
• Cons: overpriced

06/15/09

Lukewarm Overpriced Mediocrity

by ironlotus

It seems that when a restaurant has a mandatory 20% gratuity for a party of 5 or more and you have 5 or more people in your party you are asking for trouble.

I will preface what I am saying by sharing that I have been to Crush before and we had a great experience and that is why we went back, however, based on this last experience I think we will find other places to patronize.

I found the wine markup very high especially knowing that there would be an automatic 20% gratuity added on top of the markup.

Our waitress didn’t seem to have a lot of patience or time for us and we all felt a little rushed to place our order and get through the meal.

Our first course was brought out and we were eager to dig in. While many of the dishes tasted good none of them were hot, most were barely lukewarm. We had the Foie Gras and Sweetbreads on our last visit and had them again this visit, however they were prepared differently and not nearly as good. As I mentioned before they brought us an amuse bouche which was creative, beautiful and delicious. Our main courses were brought out and as we dug in many of us were sadly disappointed. My $30 sous vide fish that looked like a piece of processed fish tasted a lot like processed fish cake and was only served with a few sea beans. It was very disappointing. Some of our other party did enjoy their food but were not a fan of the food not being hot and not being served with a starch and in some of the cases the serving size itself.

My dessert was the best part of the meal and the most generous portion. Although the desserts are not inexpensive it was very good.

We have continued to talk about our meal since dining at crush but none of the comments have been good ones.

• Pros: The place is cute and we had some good cocktails, lovely amu
• Cons: Very high wine markup and corkage,overpriced, not that good