Four Seasons, Four Stars
Written: Feb 17 '02
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Pros: Delightful food, personable servers, healthy as they go, good ambiance
Cons: When you come to Seasons, you toss your diet and your wallet.
The Bottom Line: Excellent, if you and your diet can afford it. Be prepared for flattering service, filling food, and a comfy atmosphere.
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| perfectprep's Full Review: Seasons |
Waltz into Seasons restaurant with someone nice on your arm and be prepared for great food, ambiance, and service. Also be prepared to abandon some of the more normal points in life, such as diet and wallet, to name a few.
The Good
Ambiance
Enter "Seasons" and see a roomful of clubby, old-school decoration -- think blue leather -- made new with decorative ferns and live plants everwhere. I will not give the Ambiance five stars because it seems to have some sort of an "identity crisis". Very tasteful, yes, but somehow all the different elements do not work in perfect harmony with one another.
The area is split up into 5 places to dine: a bar area with television -- tiny and nothing special -- two private party rooms, the Aurora and the Seneca, which can be rented for a flat fee of $250, the small but beautiful outdoor terrace hung with ferns and graced with wrought-iron furniture, and the sumptuous main room comprised of big blue leather booths encircling large, simply-spread round tables bearing small vases of dried flowers and little flickering candles.
Chances are, you'll spend most of your time in the main dining area. It is certainly not close to an eyesore, but I have seen better as design goes. It is simpler, for example, than the Palm Court at the Plaza Hotel. This is a good thing. I like simple, practical. However, we are not talking practical here as in your basic, bare-bones decoration. The place is just ornate enough to make it feel clubby and sedate, but not luxurious or overdone.
The design elements attempt to mix your-grandmother's-pearls with your-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-and-so-on-grandmother's spearheads. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work. It comes pretty durn close.
RATING: 4/5 stars.
Service
I am not a rich bitc*. I am not spoiled. I am not a fancy restaurant connisseur. I am always a tad bit uncomfortable when I meet with over-stiff servers who care only about perfect etiquette. It feels stiff, cold, and insincere. It feels very, very stony and high-pressure. It does NOT exemplify "The customer is always right" nor "make the guest feel good". I am used to this kind of service when I visit most such restaurants.
However, The Seasons is delightfully different. The staff was very, very polite, but warmly polite, not coldly polite. Feel-good polite, not finishing-school polite. The manager took the time and care to pay us a visit and check on things. Our Maitre'd, busboy, and waiter were all exceptionally cordial and friendly. They kept my Coke glass full. They kept my plate full. They kept my stomach full -- all in a relatively timely manner. Most were knowledgeable in their reccomendations. The service was not fast, but not slow. However, between courses, you always had something to nibble on, whether it was delicious bread or the remains of your soup or whatnot.
I exchanged snippets of my poor Italian with fluent talk from our native waiter. He was a dapper, exquisitely nice gentleman. On delivering our bill, he presented it as "the worst part of the meal". I did not neglect to give him an unusual (by my standards) 25% tip.
RATING: 5/5 Stars
The Food
I'll go course by course.
Bread and Water:
No water! Tsk, tsk. There was actually only one glass placed at our two-person table. :(
Bread: yum! It compensated for the lack of water. The long, crunchy strips rolled in sesame and herbs were excellent, even without butter. The only normal bread came in little thin soldiers, not how I like it, but it was still good. The cranberry bread was certainly an acquired taste...that I never managed to acquire.
The butter was in a simple shape - s square. Good! Simplicity, understated joyous simplicity, but still so very opulent!
Drinks:
I had a Coke. Not much to say. They give you a squat little bottle and a glass of ice. The squat little bottle filled about 1.5 glasses, not quite enough to get me through the meal. Had to order another. (If there had been water, I wouldn't have.)
Appetizer:
I chose a Creamless Tomato Basil Soup. Creamless? Yuck! I go for all the cream, full-fat and everything. But I gave in and ordered the 8-dollar bowl.
It was presented beautifully -- first I got a bowl containing only a lump of tomato glop in the middle, and a long bread twist making a bridge on top. The server spooned in soup, and the bowl started to take on an identity of its own. Cool!
The taste, however, was nothing special. It seemed as though the soup was one-part green (I would assume that would be the basil) and one part red (tomato?) They weren't well mixed. The soup could have done with the cream. Too vegetable-y, not substantial enough. Maybe health nuts would like it better than I did.
Entree:
I'm a vegetarian, so I eat appropriately. At first the entree menu looked doubtful, but I scrolled all the way to the bottom and there was the one vegetarian dish: a tray presenting various hot and cold vegetarian entrees. I went for it.
I was brought a beautiful, crazily-shaped white porcelain tray. On it were four little zanily-shaped bowls, each containing a little shrunken, perfect little entree. The whole thing looked as if it were fresh from the pages of a dining magazine. Excellent!
Side Note: The serving dishes, bowls, plates, etc. are excellent at Seasons restaurant. They even match the food. Yum!
By the way, in retrospect I realize that each of the 4 mini-dishes represents one of the Four Seasons. Ooh, I like this!
Each dish complemented the others perfectly. I tried everything from radish cakes to seaweed to a perfect $hittake mushroom to delicate little potatoes. Even though I was almost full when I started my entree, I finished the whole delightful thing!
As a restaurant, Seasons carries healthy food. It's not health-nut healthy, but the portions are quite small and perfect, and the ingredients are the freshest of the fresh.
I also ordered a $6 side dish of mashed potatoes. I got a tiny little porcelain bowl of them, but they were absolutely the creamiest, smoothest ones I have ever eaten. Unfortunately, I couldn't finish them because I was far too stuffed!
Dessert:
I forced myself to order a dessert for the purposes of this opinion. I'm lucky I did! I chose the "dessert sampler" -- yet another sampler -- and, again, each of the four seasons were represented by my four tiny little desserts. I got a custard, a fruit tart, a rich square of chocolate cake, and a scoop of raspberry sorbet on a wafer, all tiny in size and each accompanied by its own little dollop of sauce. Ooh! Cute! And so good, too! I saved the chocolate cake, with its horribly rich fudge sauce, for last.
And to end:
We were brought a tiny little plate with two little truffles after we paid.
I love the presentation around here. It's so durned simple, but it works. It doesn't necessarily work with the scheme of the rest of the restaurant, but in itself it really is perfect. Didn't someone say perfection is when you can't take anything else away? Welcome to perfect-land, folks. At Seasons, you don't see 3 million forks and a fish plate and four bread plates and a glass for every type of wine. You get a simple table setting, simply presented dishes, simple, simple, simple, but gorgeous.
RATING: 4.6 stars.
The Bad
Comfort
The heating wasn't working when we came. The management could offer nothing more than a feeble excuse. And it was cold!
Portions
For that much money, they could give you a little more.
Noise
A party in the Seneca room (which can fit 22 people, the Aurora holds 14) was very loud and distracting. They got a piano player, we didn't.
You Can't Have Just One
Contrary to "portions", above, and the fact that I deemed this restaurant healthy, I did end up feeling pretty full and fat after I left. Then again, this happens at almost all fancy restaurants. My advice: exercise some sort of control and you'll be fine.
What About Those Round Seats??
Often, there are booth-like seats, big leather sofas that curve partway around the table. Often parties of two will get tables with these seats. This makes it more difficult to converse. If this is a problem for you, call in advance and ask for one of the normal seats.
The Ugly
PRICE
Is Seasons expensive or am I just a cheapskate? Okay, okay, maybe it's a bit of both. But let's be honest here, $22 for my vegetarian thing is a bit MUCH. Sure, they prepare it all by hand, using only the freshest ingredients, and you're also paying for queen-like treatment, and those cool bowls...but still. Our bill was $100, and nothing's going to change that.
Someday, people might just wake up and realize that you don't have to charge $8 for your fruit plate to still maintain "nice restaurant" status.
Basically, be ready to empty your wallet when you come here.
ADVICE
Come once and splurge! Really enjoy the maximum experience. But don't do it every week or you'll be broke. It's a good thing to save the Four Seasons for really special occasions.
If it's chilly out, bring along a coat. You just might have to wear it during the meal, as I did. And don't forget, there's a beautiful outdoor terrace, and you might want to check it out.
If you like your service, give a good tip. These people work hard, and they're good at what they do. People deserve it now and then.
Make reservations to guarantee your seat. I just happened to come at a time when the place was less busy, so I didn't have a problem just dropping in. But it's better to not take the chance.
Recommended:
Yes
Kid Friendliness: No
Vegetarian Friendly: Yes
Notes, Tips or Menu Recommendations Mashed potatoes are great. Ask for water. Go ahead, get dessert. Eat well, tip well.
Best Suited For: Friends
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perfectprep
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Reviews written: 81
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