Tribeca, Worcester Restaurant Review
Shrewsbury Street is a mecca of fine dining, so it was no great surprise when Tribeca appeared there in late 2006. I went with a friend in December 2006, and was told the restaurant had only been open just over a month. It was relatively quiet when we arrived at 6pm, but by 8:30 when we left it was reasonably full.There are two floors to this building - a lower area that is "medium high end" with a bar, and an upper floor that is "high end" with its own bar. The lower level is brick wall, tin ceiling, wood-grain (carpeted) floor. The upper level is grey and white with linen tableclothes and suited waiters. Both are relatively expensive. Even in the lower area, dinner for 2 people - with just one appetizer and one dessert, not counting drinks - was barely under $60.
The tables are black wood, the walls are either brick or light green paint, and the booths are golden. It gives the place an elegant look. The carpet really does look like wood, and it does a great job of absorbing the noise that would otherwise be quite loud. I compare this with the City Brew down the street which also has tin ceilings and is REALLY really loud. Here, at least, you can hear a conversation. The room is relatively small - a long rectangle, with about 15 tables. The few in the back are in a raised, set off area - I would go for one of these if I got here early again.
OK, on to the food. There was no bread served, so we waited for my yellowfin tuna sashimi appetizer ($12). I love this dish and have it in many places. It seemed a bit "chunky" here. Usually you do want nice big pieces of tuna when you have sashimi ... but this was a bit unwieldy. It didn't seem like great quality tuna, sort of ragged. It was served with two pieces of flat bread. My friend ate that so she'd have something to eat before dinner came. It just struck me as very odd that there was no bread served.
On to the main dish. They were very accomodating to give my friend risotto with her shrimp, as she asked. I had the haddock ($18) and they nicely substituted out veggies (asparagus) instead of potato as per my request. Both meals were delicious. I normally would have gone with tuna or swordfish, but I was curious how they'd handle haddock and it really was quite good.
For dessert we shared a white + dark chocolate mousse pie ($7), which was also very tasty. I asked for a glass of port and she said she'd have to ask what they had. So we waited a while. Eventually she came back with the pie but no port. We asked again. Apparently the bartender had to ask the owner what they had. Finally she came back and said they had Six Grapes, which was fine with me. The port finally did arrive.
This slow service was a problem the entire meal. The waitress would vanish for very long stretches of time. My wine glass was empty and by the time she showed up to ask about it, the meal was over. The water glasses sat empty. Our plates sat in front of us for a long while. It took a long while for the bill to get to us. When we finally got the receipt, there was no pen to sign it with.
The music was low key and, given the season, Christmassy. We were really looking forward to the "nightly piano music" though, and were sad that even at 8:30pm there was none. I wonder when it does start?
We'll have to come back here in a few months and see if the waitress / delay issues are worked out. Maybe they can afford nicer salt + pepper shakers too :) - the industrial ones they had on the tables didn't quite fit in with the otherwise elegant decor. With the high prices they are charging for food and drink, and given the number of other superb restaurants within a few feet of this location, they really do need to justify that price. We'll see how they do on our next visit - but right now when I'm looking for fine dining out with friends, it'll be one of the other Shrewsbury Street restaurants that I go to.
Update - November 2010. We saw Tribeca was now listing coupons with Restaurant.com which is in our experience a death knell for restaurants. So far I've gone to three restaurants by using these coupons and all three promptly folded. It's almost a joke with us now. So I called up a pair of friends and we reserved for a foursome on a Sunday evening 6:30pm. When we arrived the place was completely deserted. A while after we sat down another couple came, ate, and left again. By 8:30pm the hallway was dark and we felt like they were trying to close up, and we left. So that was fairly scary to me, that the restaurant could have so few patrons in it. If we hadn't been there, they would have had only 2 people all night long.
They did serve bread this time, in a long, thin white plate. The bread was good. However, they didn't give us bread plates! There were bread plates on other tables so they simply forgot. This even though we asked for more bread at one point. So we just laid our bread on the table.
The other woman in our party had seen hanger steak on the online menu and asked about it. Apparently it was no longer on the menu. So then we asked for something else on the menu. Nope apparently it was out. We were playing a guessing game with what was available, why didn't he tell us up front what was out of stock so we knew not to order it?
The salads only came with balsamic vinegar, which one of our guests couldn't eat. So he asked for his with a wedge of lemon instead. He was brought the balsamic vinegar salad. When the waiter brought the one with the lemon, the lemon was not very fresh. The salads were tasty, though.
When we ordered the $28 14 Hands Merlot ($9.50 retail), the waiter went off, then came back and said why not try this $48 merlot instead. Apparently they were out of the one we wanted. So we asked about the other merlots (there were 5 on the list) and apparently ONLY the $48 one was in stock. So then we played the guessing game with the wines too and NONE of the syrah on the list were in stock, and so on. If the wine list is so incredibly wrong, why not print a new one up on a laser printer? That's much better than having a list with a lot of wines on it and only having 1 out of 10 of them in the house. We finally agreed on a Californian syrah he brought that wasn't even on the list. It did end up being good.
Two of us had the salmon, one the ravioli and one carbonara. The carbonara was watery, not a rich sauce as you'd expect. Everything was good tasting. For dessert we had a chocolate cake and a tiramisu. Both were fairly large in size and the tiramisu again wasn't what you would expect, although it was tasty. So those come down to setting expectations, that if it was going to be an unusual variety, it's probably good to mention it ahead of time so people are prepared.
The waiter refilled the water glasses reasonably well, was attentive, but didn't know the answers to some questions about the ingredients in the menu items. Luckily we had a smart phone with us to look things up.
Really though the strangeness of things missing off the menu, most of the wine list being AWOL, and the complete lack of people made us question how long Tribeca will be around. Ironically I had tried to go here about a month ago to use the coupon, with a friend of mine, and when we showed up the place was completely dark. There was no sign explaining why they were closed - they simply had shut their doors. We had to go down the street to another restaurant. I had thought at the time that Tribeca had given up, and was surprised when they were still here for our dinner tonight. I guess we'll see if they rebound going forward, or if they are on their last legs.
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