DINNER: Ambience, Lisa's Take

I'm going to be one of the odd men out and be a little bit more critical of Ambience than the others! Rogue blogger! :) We were really hyped to try Ambience and the prix fixe meals there, but kind of got mixed impressions. The service was a little bizarre at first; I did feel that there wasn't a whole lot of enthusiasm by the wait-staff when we first arrived and the server didn't seem to know what was on the beer list. To her credit, the waitress got a lot better as the evevning went on. As for the food, I thought some dishes were lackluster and others pretty decent; I think, however, that I was hoping it would be more like the Kitchen or Ella, but I think I prefer Ella. The starter dish was a strange salmon mousse concoction on soft toast. We just said "eh" and looked for the next dish. My tuna dish was pretty decent, although one of the tuna sashimis was mixed with a strange tomato paste/sauce, which didn't seem to go together well. The crab cake, again, was ok; the best part was the baby polenta crouton. Wish I had had two more of those! The highlight of my meal was the veal shank; it was perfect. I also tried the beef tartar, which was not tasty, and the duck, which had a strange texture. The rabbit was decent. If this was Iron Chef, I would give them a 25 on presentation and more like a 19 on food. Very hit or miss selections, although impressive that they have such a wide variety and the plating is excellent!