“Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest; and despair most sits.”
-William Shakespeare, “All’s Well That Ends Well”
Expectation is one of the many fuzzy criteria that I use when evaluating a restaurant, either for myself or for my job as a critic. In other words, how much I like a restaurant has everything to do with the expectations I have about the place before I get there.
This is true for most of us, I think. When expectations for a special meal run high, they fall further when they’re dashed. Your disappointment is greater.
Conversely, when expectations are low, you’re even more pleasantly surprised when they’re surpassed.
Think about it. At a high-profile restaurant, with a fancy dining room, sky-high prices, lots of buzz and a jacket-required policy, you expect to be blown away by your meal. If the food and service aren’t out of this world, you’re disappointed.
And if the bill is huge, you’re downright angry.
This has happened to me more times than I can recount, most recently during a late-spring visit to New York where I ate at a hot, new-ish Italian restaurant called A Voce. After reading glowing reviews and spending most of the afternoon trying to decide which shoes to wear, I was served a subpar meal, including a lukewarm martini and a mushy bowl of pasta. What’s more, our waiter treated us poorly from appetizers to dessert, at turns ignoring and disdaining us. We felt unwelcome.
A total letdown.
I just expected so much more.
On the other hand, at a hole-in-the-wall locals-only joint where the only dress requirements are shirts and shoes, excellent food stands out even more proudly.
Like the other night, when I dined at Cherry Crest Seafood Restaurant and Kitchen, a no-frills fish shack wedged into a strip mall on South University Boulevard and Orchard Road. The furniture is a hodgepodge collection of rickety tables, “is this a trick chair?” seating, vinyl-covered benches and tables pushed together into booths. Servers flit about in shorts and Crocs, not starched white shirts and tuxedo pants. The drink of the day is beer, not champagne.
Although they have a huge menu with a whole range of fish, shellfish, and crustaceans in various preparations, I zeroed in on a dish that I suspected I wouldn’t like at all: Lobster and crab-stuffed enchiladas. It sounded, to me, like the worst kind of fusion cooking, that kind where a cook tries to adapt far-flung ingredients into a local preparation.
But the menu pegged the enchiladas as the chef’s specialty, so I figured I’d better give them a shot, low expectations or not.
Turns out they made for an excellent dish, with succulent chunks of lobster, sweet crabmeat, delicate tortillas, a creamy, dusty-spice sauce, and a pile of buttery, bright orange squash on the side. I loved every bite, and woke up the next morning craving more.
I guess the question is this: Did I love this dish more because of where it came from?
In other words, was I more open-minded about this dish because of where I was? Did it satisfy me more deeply because my expectations were low? Would I have loved it as much if I had been at A Voce in New York City, where I would have been charged two or three times as much and would have had to wear too-tight loafers?
I’m not sure.
But about this I’m sure: The sweetest surprises come at the most unexpected times. I was surprised, sweetly, at Cherry Crest Seafood. And I’ll be back for another helping of lobster enchiladas.
As for another visit to A Voce for a bowl of mushy pasta? Fuhgettaboutit.
Dining critic Tucker Shaw can be reached at 303-820-1958 or at dining@denverpost.com.
