Black Pearl

I ate at Black Pearl this weekend, after avoiding it ever since it opened. I thought the menu seemed a little bland, a little too generic. After walking by and hearing the bossa nova band that has played there recently on Friday nights, I thought I would give it a shot.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed with the experience, and I don't think I'd return for dinner (although I'm still planning on checking it out for brunch). My girlfriend had the ravioli sampler, which had three types of ravioli. Two of them were quite good, but the third seemed undercooked, and the sauce was not very good. The mushroom raviolis were excellent. However good this dish might have been, it was kind of marred by being served on a plastic dish. No 21$ dish should come on a plastic plate. I'm generally not snobby, but when you order an expensive dish, presentation is part of what you're paying for. Obviously, it didn't change the taste of the dish, but it seemed sort of tacky.

I had the mushroom pizza, which was underwhelming. The ingredients didn't really meld together - it seemed like it was just a collection of toppings on top of a bland crust. For the same price, I could have had an excellent pizza at Franny's, or a very good pizza at La Villa.

The inside of the restaurant is very nice, and it feels like a luxorious place to eat at, except that the "nice" effect is largely negated by the large screen TV blaring over the corner of the bar. Again, if I'm paying 20$+ for an entree, part of what you're paying for is the experience. I don't understand why they would wreck such nice ambiance with the TV.

As a side note, I'm not sure why any restaurant around here has a TV playing. Who goes out to eat at a restaurant to watch a silent TV? I was recently Mekong on 5th Ave, where they've also got an always on TV. They had it tuned to the discovery channel, which was showing some "look at the nasty stuff that animals and people eat!" show - close ups of flies vomiting on their food to digest it, rotting fishheads, etc. Not the sort of thing you want to see or think about while waiting for your dish to arrive.

Anyway, the bossa nova band at Black Pearl was decent, but the meal itself seemed overpriced. For the same amount of money, I could have eaten at a much, much nicer restaurant and had food that is several notches above what they serve at Black Pearl. I won't be going back for dinner.