Critic's Review
You know you're off the beaten path when you still have coin meters across from your restaurant. Fort Lauderdale has been doing away with these for years; you'll be hard pressed to find too many of these downtown these days.
Review 9/4/2014
I've given up on this place posting a lunch menu, so a couple of weeks ago I started thinking about giving the place a try. They stop serving lunch at 2:30, so every time I thought of it it was either after 2pm or too stormy. Today it was sunny, high 80s and I got organized by 1:45, so off I went.
Usually restaurants off the main grid have free parking, but not this one. It's only 75 cents an hour; the spot I found had over an hour left on the meter so I got a freebee.
There were only 2 people eating outside so I initially thought I'd eat on the patio, but they only have 3 small tables and one communal table, which takes up half of the outside space.
It doesn't seem too smart to have a big table in a small place like this. Forced trendiness; I decided to eat inside.
If you don't look out the window, the place is a bit NYCish; a small very loud room with tables positioned to maximize capacity. With only 3 other couples in the place it was LOUD; it must be deafening with a full room. I got the menu of the day and ordered an iced tea. It came out with a sliver of lemon; I asked for a bit more while I decided what I wanted.
The limited menu gave me few choices. They had a flat iron steak for $20; I didn't want a salad or a burger; I decided on the salmon cakes, which according to the menu are served with "tartare, greens and fries". Tartare usually means "raw", but I figured it was the british spelling for tartar sauce.
There was a constant flow of servers flowing through the room; they were setting the tables for dinner. Music wasn't bad with "Dreaming" and a lot of stuff I couldn't make out over the noise.
When they brought out the food I was surprised by the portions. The cake had a heavy crust which I didn't expect.
I cut the cake to see what was inside: Potatoes? Really?
The "greens" was a dry arugula salad; they didn't even bother to remove the thick stems. I started to cut it, and a bunch of the fries ended up on the table. I had to ask for a side dish to offload the fries.
The fries were served unseasoned.
My idea to salt them was derailed by the gimmicky condiments; a spoon and course salt.
What am I supposed to do with course salt, sprinkle it on the fries and have it fall all over the table? Coarse salt goes in a grinder; kosher salt is for sprinkling or pinching. No ketchup either; I had to ask for that as I can't eat plain, unsalted fries.
As I was eating this, I thought of the old joke: Q: "What's the difference between a cook and a chef?" A: "Arugula". Every other item has arugula here. Enough said.
With the heavy crust and fillers, the salmon cakes didn't taste much like salmon. I tried to get a fork full of salmon, but it was no use. The tartar sauce was good, but I was hoping for something delicate and healthy and I got a deep fried potato cake. And who wants a raw arugula salad with no dressing?
Conclusion
Hardy Park Bistro turned out to be exactly the opposite of what I expected. I expected small portions of well-crafted food, and instead got an overflowing plate of pedestrian stuff that I might expect to be served at Mulligan's.
Something surprising was the amateur mistakes; easily correctable, that have gone unchecked months after opening. You'd think that someone would have pointed out that you de-stem arugula, you can't salt anything with a spoon and course salt, and that you can't serve a heaping salad on a flat plate; the couple next to me struggled to eat a non-chopped caesar that couldn't be cut without the salad ending up all over the table. Get some big bowls, for pete's sake. I understand when people open a new restaurant and make mistakes. I don't understand when they don't have any employees or friends honest enough to point out the obvious things that they're doing wrong.
Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function getUser() on null in /usr/local/www/sites/classes/comments-class.php:267 Stack trace: #0 /usr/local/www/sites/classes/comments-class.php(75): threadedComments->formatComment(Object(stdClass)) #1 /usr/local/www/sites/classes/comments-class.php(77): threadedComments->printParent(Array, 1) #2 /usr/local/www/sites/classes/comments-class.php(100): threadedComments->printParent(Array) #3 /usr/local/www/sites/comments.php(74): threadedComments->printComments(Array) #4 /usr/local/www/sites/single-post.php(208): require_once('/usr/local/www/...') #5 /usr/local/www/sites/post.php(22): include('/usr/local/www/...') #6 /usr/local/www/sites/index.php(172): include('/usr/local/www/...') #7 {main} thrown in /usr/local/www/sites/classes/comments-class.php on line 267