I went tonight, solo.
I got the greens salad, cali-prese, re-marinara, and the soft serve. I thought the dressing on the salad was good but the salad itself was not — the mix of greens was totally off, the salad felt like it was half mint. the cali-prese was very good. the pizza was good but not great — on the mozza / cosa buona / desano tier, though definitely more interesting than those. And i thought the soft serve was also good but not great.
like others have said, the pacing was not good. the salad and cali-prese came out almost immediately and then i sat around for about 20-25 minutes waiting for the pizza. service was fine otherwise.
but my main takeaway is that i just don’t get who this restaurant is for / what the point of the restaurant is. i went to angler 1.0 the first week it opened. it was transcendent. and i get that not every restaurant is some quixotic quest for truth, beauty, and self-actualization. but i’m not clear what this restaurant is trying to do. i think i saw somewhere that the goal is to make it a neighborhood spot. and it already seems to be successful at becoming that — half the restaurant was families with kids, and all those tables seemed to order the same thing: pizza, caesar salad, and meatballs. but if that’s right, then i don’t understand what the rest of the menu is doing. is the idea to have a quarter of a menu for local families, with the other 3/4ths for sophisticat foodies like us?
edit with further thoughts the next day:
on pacing, i agree with the comment that, at this price point, it’s a little weird to “require” that you to order everything at once, but then not course the meal out. (even as someone who likes to speed-eat and get in and out as fast as i can, i’m getting very tired of getting hit with the “woe is the kitchen” spiel — as soon as i sit down — that everything needs to be ordered at once, that food will just come out whenever it’s ready and in no particular order, etc.) this is a professional kitchen that looks to be run by good, experienced people — they should be able to figure out how to course out a meal for those who want that. i sat next to two people who seemed to be “pro eaters” (maybe even people on this sub???), and the restaurant just dumped all the colds / apps on them and then the pizzas, which sat there for 5-10 mins while they worked through the backlog of the other food.
on service, i preferred having the extra plates, napkins, and utensils on the table so that i could just handle all that stuff myself. but that might be the speed eater in me. this place is casual, and putting the plates, napkins, and utensils seemed appropriate for the food and reminded me of old neighborhood pizzerias. i liked it, and i think that part of the service works. (though it won’t work for everyone at the price point.) also, there was one server (though she wasn’t my “main” server) who was exceptional — re-filled the water immediately, wiped the table down after every course, etc. real pro stuff.
on the menu, i appreciate the other commenter saying that it’s good that it combines more approachable, family-friendly food (pizza, meatballs) with more interesting stuff for adults. even so, the menu itself is just not cohesive. to me, it’s not obvious how you’d build your classic / typical / normal meal here — for example, a main, side of veggies, some starches, etc. it just seems like skenes is flexing and threw just a bunch of stuff on the menu with no rhyme or reason. that’s particularly problematic if, as others have reported, some of the more adventurous dishes are poorly cooked or seasoned. if you can’t properly salt a squid that — even on its best day — will sell to only a few customers, what’s the point of having the squid on the menu?
on where the restaurant fits in to the food scene, i still don’t get it, particularly at this price point. if i want a more upscale, “special occasion” meat- and seafood-based meal, i’d go to dunsmoor. if i wanted a local pizza and salad place for weeknight dinner, i’d go to mozza. or quarter sheets. or pizzeria sei. even the physical restaurant itself seems to be doing two things — the west side is all exposed brick and nostalgic posters (like a pizza place), while the south side is all glass and marble (like an oyster bar). that said, i do think that if the restaurant just picked one approach or the other, it probably would be exceptional — for example, the cali-prese and re-marinara were good and interesting enough that i’d love to see what the restaurant would look like if it tried to be more of a straight down-the-middle pizza / pasta place. same if it wanted to be a more upscale dunsmoor-like restaurant. another commenter proposed something like a combo cocktail / oyster bar / pizza spot, and that might be where this goes.)
without that focus, i worry this is the kind of place you go to once or twice in the first few months of opening because you want to try “josh skenes’s new restaurant.” then you don’t go back. which is a bummer because my guy can cook.
