Arrows Restaurant - wildly disappointing (long) [Ogunquit, Me]
My wife and I added a day onto our trip to Boston for a wedding so we could hit Arrows Restaurant. We ate at the White Barn Inn this past summer during a vacation and wanted to try the other A+ restuarant in Maine. We know many people who have been and raved about it. Sadly, we will not be among the ravers.
Once sat, we were offered water service (a little over the top) and an optional butter service (a LOT over the top). I'm a big butter fan, though, so we went with the butter service. 3 specialty butters which were just fine. But when we were served bread, we were given one slice each. So we quickly were without bread, with plenty of butter still left to go. We eventually had to request more bread.
We did the six-course tasting menu. It was a little odd that there was no amuse buche, but it seemed particularly lacking when the first course came out - lobster and brussel sprouts - a fairly heavy way to begin without a small amuse. The lobster dish itself didn't really work, since the strong the strong lobster flavor competed with the strong brussel sprout flavor the whole way. [Remember this comment...it's the motif of the evening.] Toward the end of the dish we struck a lemony sauce underneath, which kind of brought the dish together. But too little too late. To be clear, each element of the plate was prepared well - it was the design of the recipe that seemed to fail.
The second course was what I imagine is their signature - 4 lettuces, 4 oils, 4 vinegars. This was the home run. An extremely interesting and well-designed plate that wowed us. It would be worth returning just to have this.
The third course was fish - turbot, to be exact. This plate was out of control, and not in a good way. The turbot had a sauce of shrimp and oysters which was very strong. Again, a bad choice since the fish and the sauce really fought each other the whole way through the dish. There was also a fried potato ball on top of jerusalem artichoke puree and some other sauces. (?) There was ALSO a small fennel salad with mandarin orange. The entire plate was complicated and didn't work well together. It looked like it was way too involved, as well. Honestly one of the most poorly designed fish courses I've ever experienced. I thought it would be the most poorly designed course of the night. Sadly, I was wrong.
The fourth course was beef, prepared traditionally with potato and red wine reduction. There was certainly nothing surprising about this dish but it was very well executed and delicious. I would go back for the salad and the beef only, except the beef was $44 a la carte! Huh?! But for us, it was lovely.
The fifth course was cheese. Or was supposed to be, anyway. Cheese plates are supposed to be about the cheese. On this plate, the cheese was an accent. There were two cheeses, both rather mild. The white cheese came resting on pear. (So far so good.) Next to it was a poached pear. (OK.) With pomegranite seeds. (Uh...) And marmalade. (Stop.) And other accompaniments. (STOP!) The blue cheese was fine but came with a similarly long list of side items, each of which was displayed at least as prominently as the cheese. And in case that's not enough, there were slices of homemade dried sausage on the plate. As before, taken individually, each item was fine. But as a whole, the plate was a disaster, and didn't remotely serve the function that a cheese plate is meant to serve.
The sixth course was dessert. Once again, a very involved plate that didn't seem to merge in any coherent theme. Vanilla panna cotta was DELICIOUS! a small spoon with cranberries and pomegranite seeds (there they are again) seemed superfluous. There was also a small bowl of unmemorable chocolate ice cream, over which we poured pomegranite juice from a small pitcher on the plate. The pitcher sat in a small pool of chocolate, which made for messy and unappealing occurrences when you picked it up to pour.
The dessert plate might be better remembered if there were petit fours at the end of the meal. After all that food, dark chocolate is more than a fun bonus - it's a way to clean it all up once you're done. Since that dessert plate didn't come close to accomplishing that, petit fours would have been most welcome. But alas.
The final kicker was that we went to the entryway to retrieve our coats and after 3-4 minutes, had to eventually hunt someone down back in the dining room to retrieve them.
I will say that the salad dish was tantalizing enough that we would probably return if we were up there during the summer, while the garden is in full operation. But our December 1 visit was a conceptual disaster and didn't live up to the excitement we'd heard about from many our friends. The White Barn Inn, while the food wasn't out of this world, was a much more complete and satisfying dinner experience.
By binkis
on Dec 6, 2006 07:40 PM
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Sorry to hear that. Arrows is such beautiful place. Please try again in the summer- we were there in October and it was wonderful. We have eaten there at least 2x year since it opened. The only diappointment we had was one of their "specialty dinners" a Easter in Istanbul, which was not only not good but an historical abomination- all Turkish food- when the Turks are Muslems!!! (We thought it would be Greek food since Easter is a Christian holiday). You should send an email to Clarke Frasier- any time I have a comment he answers. He is such a nice guy. The bread thing is a mystery since usually they come around with a bread basket and ask you to pick your choice then they come around again and again! Please don't write off Arrows.
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Sorry your experience at the White Barn Inn was not perfect, but we just love it there, and living about 45 minutes away, we save it for special occasions. We don't go to Arrows for many reasons, but I guess some people just love it there. On the Marsh is another favorite of ours.
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What was the cost?
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$95 per person. $6 for the butter tasting. $125 bottle of white burgundy.
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You'd think for a $100 meal, they could throw in the "butter tasting".
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That is OUTRAGEOUS! They have a complimentary butter tasting with some of the most delicious freh baked chef's own breads at Richards Bistro On Lowell St in Manchester NH. with every meal, along with cheese, muffin bites and olives/marinated mushrooms/artichokes (depending on the season). These alone are to die for.
My husband and I just went there again last night and were so thrilled we made reservations for another night next month!
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They nickle and dime you to the death trap...and if they keep it up it may lead to their demise................
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Wow--I had a totally parrall experience with arrows this past Memorial Day weekend..WAY OVER THE TOP with the pretention, yet without the tasty kahoonas to back it up.....the only thing that i feel i got the better of was that the "3 tastings of butter" was complimentary....WHOOO, THANKS!!...now, can i get some bread please??
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When the Arrows boys had this only restaurant, it was truly excellent. They are now in the process of opening a 3rd restaurant I believe in the Boston area. So that may explain why things may go downhill. Its best when the owner is in the kitchen,and when he leaves the kitchen, anything can take place. Don't forget, when a new upcoming chef is very well trained, why does he need to work for someone else?
Think about it.....
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Have you been up to The Cape Arundel Inn in Kennebunkport?
To me, it's devine.
The food and service are excellent. The view? Amazing.
Just thought I would pass on a lovely experience.
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Arrows was unique for the area for the first few years after it opened. It was only a seasonal reastaurant then. We'd go there in late summer for the house-cured prosciutto when the Black Mission Figs came in. The food was cutting edge and the service was tight and attentive. There were no surcharges for "butter" and there was usually a visit from Mark or Clark some time during the meal. We do not live close by but always tried to get there once or twice a year--it was worth it. After the 3rd or 4th year, things started to slip. The last time we went (3 years ago) was to celebrate a special birthday. The first course was served--rather sloshed--over the side of the plate into the lap of my partner. There was a half-articulated "oops" and no one said anything more, even though the waitperson was well aware of the gaff. Finally she brought a wet-wipe which did nothing to remove the grease stain. I wrote a letter to Mark and Clark and received no reply. It really would have been okay had someone sincerely apologized, offered a complimentary glass of something or dessert, or (after the letter) offered to pay for the dry cleaning--just any little token. The food has always been good there, but we have not been, nor will we, return after that experience. There are just too many good new restaurants to experience without backtracking to a bad experience.
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We have had dinner at Arrows every year for about 15 years (or as long as they have been open). The food and service are excellent, but the atmosphere is unbeatable. RE the complaints about the butter I think this is ridiculous. They give you butter. If you want a tasting of several other butters you pay for it. you get butter and you don't have to pay for it. Why complain if you don;t want the gourmet butters or don;t want to pay for them. Silly. If they didn't offer the butter no one would have a complaint. We had a bad service experience at MC last year ( 1 bad experience out of about 15 visits) and I sent Clarke an email. He sent a return email profoundly apologizing. The next time we went to MC we got extra attention. They are still a seasonal restaurant, although the season is( not by their choice, but a matter of fact) longer. It is a wondrful place and they still have house cured proscuitto, among other house made delicacies.
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I am a HUGE fan of the White Barn Inn although it is out of my price range now. I have eaten there several times, and have never walked away disappointed.
We decided to try Arrows a number of years ago and I would NEVER go back. The service was horrible. My husband wanted some steak entree and the waiter said"No, you don't want that".
My husband said yes, I do.
It is one thing to say you don't recommend it,but to say it and continue to argue it(which the waiter did, and it made my husband all the more determined).
I had ordered proscuitto with a rasp. sauce. It was the worst presentation I have ever seen. It looked like they threw the ham all over the plate and then splattered it with sauce( which looked like blood). Not very appetizing.
The waiter never got better. He was snobbish through the whole meal. I don't remember much else except that we wished we had been eating at the White Barn instead.
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Well. I think trying a place once many years ago is not really giving it a chance, especially where your main complaint was the waiter. Then again, each to their own. Anyone who reads these boards knows that what is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander. Foe example, we personally dislike the White Barn Inn for its pretentiousness and find it over priced and the food not a good as Arrows..
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Actually, the wait staff was just the highlight. I just thought the food(and presentation) was okay. Not really worth the price. Nothing struck me as memorable or good enough to go back for. That said, giving it another shot would be fair, but I didn't think for those prices that it was worth another disappointment.
I thought I wouldn't like the atmosphere at the White Barn either, but our wait staff has always been down to earth when I asked questions (showing my complete ignorance of all things alcoholic and not really caring what their reaction would be) they surprisingly answered me with humor and humility, not arrogance. It is overpriced now. When we started going it was around $55/head.Now it is closer to $95? Hence the reason we haven't been. Always interesting to hear an arguement from the other side though.
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My partner and I ate at Arrows on July 24, 2002. The tab for two was $458.30. We thought the food was only all right. The staff was decidedly inattentive and aloof. My sharpest memory is of ordering the wine. I had chosen a bottle for a mere $75, but the waiter would not accept that. With considerable condescension, he told me the proper wine for the meal was something else. Wine that cost $130 a bottle. I said, "No." He said, "Yes." I don't ordinarily give in when being brow-beaten, but he finally wore me down, and I ordered the wine he demanded I get. I know it was my own fault for knuckling under, but after that experience, I will never return to Arrows.
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Well, W eat at Arrows all the time and our bill for two is usually about $200- 250. If you ordered $450 worth of food, whose fault is that? Did you have the caviar service?? You can look at their online menu- even the multicourse tasting menu is only $95 per person. Most entrees are in the $40-45 range. Add a bottle of wine and you have $250. You pay for what you order. In the 15 or so years we have eaten there, no one has ever tried to talk us into anything. Very bizzare. How about just say NO!
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I have to disagree with you about the price of a meal at Arrows. It is almost impossible to get out of that restaurant for less than 300 unless you order based on the right side of the menu (meaning looking at the price first) With apps at 20 and entrees at 45 that is 130 for an app and entree for two. Add on a 100 dollar bottle of wine and 6 dollars for butter, 6-8 for one of ten bottles of water, dessert, and it is very normal to spend 350-400 with tip at this restaurant.
I have to agree with babyslam and others that the service at this place is horrible. For that price you would expect that a server would have two tables at the most. Service would be flawless. We have eaten there a couple of times and the service has been spotty with dirty dinner plates sitting in front of us for 20 minutes before removal. For a place that "requires" a jacket their service doesn't live up to it. I think that Mark and Clarke should read this board as there are WAY more negative posts than positive.
For my Money I would go to Hugo's or White Barn Inn before I ever go back to Arrows, and I don't recommend it to friends visiting.
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On a recent experience at Arrows, the waiter dropped two hot cups to cappuccino on my wife, burning her arm and covering her attire and purse. At the culmination of the meal, the server informed that Arrows would not be charging us for my wife’s dessert. I was horrified by the lack judgment in this half hearted response to burning my wife’s arm and ruining her birthday dinner. Arrows clearly put their revenue ahead of our dining experience. After a follow-up call to Clark, one of the owners of Arrows, it was agreed that Arrows would credit us for the full cost of the meal. I was also a bit curious when the waiter informed that Arrows did not have the Pinot Noir I had selected from the wine list in stock and the replacement wine the waiter recommended had a metal screw cap as opposed to a cork. Arrows will not be a five star dining experience until such time as they appropriately train their wait staff and management.
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There is nothing wrong with Stelvin closures (aka screwcaps); they actually keep wine from corking and spoiling much better than a traditional cork. Many prestigious wineries use them now, such as Plumpjack and Caymus. They aren't a sign of "cheap" wine.
Burning your wife, on the other hand, and not comping your meal is inexcusable.
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10/13 we too had a rather disappointing meal at Arrows. The meal was not bad, it was worse, uninteresting and uninspired. In a word, average. If Arrows opens a restaurant in Boston as rumors have it, keeping at the current level of food will be the end of them.
We, two of us, ordered the so-called Garden menu ($97.00), starting with cured meats which were amateurish, the kind that your neighbor makes in his back yard with a basic Home Depot bought smoker. You know that meat which taste like smoke, not like meat. (Where I come from, smoked meat is supposed to have a hint of smoke, nothing more.) Of three small samples, sausage was the simplest and the only one, in my mind, worth keeping.
Next came garden salad which was the best dish of the evening. Not too exciting, though. A bit of green salad with a good dressing.
Fish, line caught halibut, was a disappointment. A small piece was overdone and dry on one side, just right on the other. It main taste was of butter (in which it was sauteed). Meager helping of a good side dish (quail egg) made you hope that better is yet to come.
Next course, tenderloin, was indeed better then the fish, but not excellent. It was done right and served with an interesting beats sauce and warm red cabbage.
Cheese course was a joke. Two miniature pieces of cheese (one of which was a bitter brie), about ½ square inch would be embarrassment if served at home.
Desert much the same. Were it not for chocolate panna cotta, it would have been entirely forgettable.
Looking back, I ate a lot of bread waiting for small and underwhelming dishes.
They made sure that we were out before 9pm when second seating starts.
I could not help remembering another prix fixe dinner at Aki in NYC, on 4th street, ($27.00). Though not all dishes were at the same level, most were events that made us happy we were there to participate in the chef’s artistry – artistry was the ingredient notably missing from the dinner at Arrows.
We did not have any problems with waiting stuff. What was over the top for us is the discrepancy btw. price and quality of dishes. There was really nothing to justify the expense ($320 total).
Setting of the restaurant is nice but does not itself merit a visit.
Arrows’s fame is a bubble which will burst sooner or later.
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My wife and I just ate at Arrows for the first time for the holiday weekend, and we were sorely disappointed. We live in New York, and are perfectly happy to pay top dollar for a wonderful mean, but this was not. The service was stiff and pretenious. The butter tasting for $6 was offensive - but if you are going to offer butter for sale, it better be great. It wasn't. It was just butter. We had the six-course garden tasting menu, two cocktails, the butter, and a bottle of wine. With tip, we still made it to $383. The food was entirely forgetable - I literally cannot remember what we had - and we will never be back. Notably, two days later we paid half as much at Fore Street, a delicious and warm restaurant in downtown Portland, and enjoyed our meal twice as much.
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After reading this last post , I think the bubble broke!
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My wife and I tried Arrow's a few weeks ago, and I must concur with binkis. We got off to a bad start when I requested tap water after the waiter tried hard to push the "water service" on us. He then said, "you know, that's the same water that goes into the dishwasher". Unbelievable. For the sake of brevity, the rest of the meal was an experience of condescension and remarkably overpriced food considering the average to above average quality. For this torture we were separated from $290.00! Imagine if we had sprung for the water!
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So glad that we're not the only one to have an unremarkable meal at Arrows. We dined there a while ago, and I can't even tell you what we ordered -- the only item that left an impression was the bill ($300+). For wonderful, consistent food at far more reasonable price, we dine at Bresca's in Portland or Provence in Ogunquit Not as high end as Arrows, but high quality fresh ingredients without the attitude!!
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"He then said, "you know, that's the same water that goes into the dishwasher".
My jaw is on my desk as I read this.
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I would have said two things:
Firstly -- "I hope for your patrons' sakes that the water in your dishwater is every bit as clean as any of your drinking water."
Secondly -- "Good night."
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Ha!! Yes, that's a very good point! (sh/be clean water going into a dishwasher)
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Seems like yet another reason to stop watching the Phantom Gourmet. Geez, they gave this place an almost perfect score of 98! I did notice their review was about 3 years ago. Could it have gone down in quality that far since?
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We had our final meal at this restaurant about a year ago. Arrows has gotten increasingly skimpy and pretentious with each passing year. We think that the James Beard Award is diminished by this kind of establishment because the food is far from extraordinary. Instead it has become contrived and gimmicky. Sadly, it is the counterfeit of elegance and taste - overwrought style with little substance. Yes, service was often "amateur night in Dixieville" Do the owners realize that - "butter and water" specialties make them look ridiculous! For example, we once ordered the white truffle risotto which was so very endless - they just didn't know how to buy a decent truffle. The wine list is way over priced (try 400+% over retail!) and with naive regard to vintage. Our online requests for "customer service" were met with disdain. Never again. Take your $400 elsewhere or see a good psychiatrist instead!
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I am sorry to hear this. I love MC Perkins Cove and have had wonderful food and service there. Also met one of the chef/owners outside as we were leaving and he was gracious and humble.
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