Geronimo - New Haven

[danieljdwyer]

I've recommended this place on this board a few times, but am now ready to redact those recommendations. I'm not an expert on Southwestern food, and my experience eating in the Southwest is not extensive. However, my concerns with Geronimo are not about authenticity - the last two meals I have had there have just not been good.
I've had good meals there before, and I think I have recognized something of a pattern to their unfortunately hit or miss food. They seem to do simple things well enough. For example, the guacamole was very good this past Friday. The macaroni and cheese with hatch green chili was also good. My chicken mole was not. The chicken was well cooked, but the four meager pieces of asparagus were ovderdone. The flavor of the mole was just plain bad. It was sort of a red mole, but only sort of. My wife's quesadillas were, good.
So, there's the pattern. Dishes where the flavor relies on putting flavorful things together - cheese + meat + grilled tortilla is hard to mess up when you start with good ingredients - tend to be good. Dishes with more complicated flavoring - sauces, or their sangrita, which is really bad - usually fall flat. They also seem to have trouble with starches.
They do make some things pretty well, enough that you could - as I did the first few times I went - have a good meal. But they are hit or miss enough that you could also have a pretty bad meal. I could see going back for one of the things I know they can do well.
They also are just about the only place I know in Connecticut that has a decent tequila selection, and this will keep me coming back. However, this time around I ordered a glass of tequila, neat, while waiting for a table. Apparently, at the patio bar, they use plastic "glasses". The plastic made my tequila taste funny. Highly disappointing.

[shoes]

I've been here twice for drinks since my initial post, and I have to agree with other posters that this a meat-market kind of Gen Y bar scene place. The food is passable and pricey. Maybe with enough tequila, no one notices.

[lvtocook888]

I must say that I enjoyed my experience at Geronamo. I had the bison nachos and yucca fries..both were fantastic! The tequila flight was tasty and I really enjoyed the passion fruit jalapeno infused tequila margarita. The service was attentive and knowledgeable. Overall it was a great experience, and would go back again.

[Shoreliner]

We ate at Soul de Cuba a week ago (it was great) and afterward stopped at Geronimo for a drink. The patio was full and very busy. We went inside and sat at the bar - the place was empty inside. I thought the menu was interesting and was interested in trying it sometime - but after the reviews I won't bother. Guess the inside was empty for a reason.

[Scargod]

This is their third post. I don't mean it as an indictment, it's just that I don't know them or where they're coming from. While I have certainly had my issues with Geronimo, it has never come close to approaching this level of ineptitude.
Lorax, why did you not send it back or did you complain? Was there nothing done right, for anyone in your party?

[joan mar]

My husband and I stopped at Geronimo's last Sat. night for a drink (after being at the Jazz Fesitval on the New Haven Green). We haven't had dinner there since it first opened, but I did enjoy it then. But, it was PACKED on Sat. night inside and out. We thought we might sit on the patio and have a drink, but it was SO HUMID that we went inside. It wasn't much cooler inside, unfortunately. But it seems that this place has become more of a pick-up bar than a restaurant.

[Scargod]

More like Bar? So, last Sat. night it was good? What did you have?
They are now open for lunch, I noticed.
I so much want this place to be decent (or just a little better than previous experiences), so I can get my occasional Southwestern fix.

[joan mar]

Yes, more like Bar. We didn't have food, just drinks.

[lvtocook888]

My friend just made us reservations there for a double date night. She went there with girlfriends and apparently enjoyed it enough to go back. However, after reading many of these posts, I'm having second thoughts. I'm think it sounds like the tequila went to their heads last time to have enjoyed it so much, but I guess we will see tonight...

[The Lorax]

I and two companions had the worst meal we've ever had in New Haven (in 20 years and lots of dives) at Geronimo last night. The Avocado Beef was dry when it was supposed to be a braise. Covered with a squirt of some creamy flavorless slime on top--some canned salsa would have improved it immeasurably. My order was incorrectly processed so my companions were done before I even got my sea bass. At $26 it was ridiculous when I think about BeSpoke could do for $26. The white rice with green beans and little square carrots looked like something out of the June Cleaver's freezer and had no flavor. The sea bass was flavorless, rubbery and cold. The sweet potatoes were hard and cold. Even a little salt would have helped. The other dish eaten was the chorizo stuffed porkchop--completely burned all the way around outside--to the point of flaking shards of carbon.

Stay away! This place was beyond stupid. I don't see how they can stay in business unless the bar keeps them afloat. They should not be serving food in a town like this--what an embarrassment. I am so mad that we wasted the money, the time and the companionship when we could have gone to so many other wonderful places. Anything else would be better including a Lean Cuisine out of the cooler at StopnShop! This place has such nerve pretending they know anything about food and taking our money like that. Highway robbery. My vitriol has no bounds...

[Scargod]

I've been struggling with a reply since I have said positive things about Geronimo on several occasions. My last meal there was more of a dud, like yours.
I think Geronimo is in serious need of a chef who tastes what he puts out. I seriously question whether they have a real chef overseeing quality and consistency.
My biggest gripe is inconsistency and bad judgment in what they concoct. I was seriously disappointed in the green chile sauce they served with my tamale, with its very oily preparation and overpowering cinnamon. I frankly don't get asparagus with chicken in mole; not very Southwestern.
You didn't say how the mole was "bad". Mole will be bitter if they burn any of the peppers or leave in burnt seeds and burnt membrane. I have burnt peppers before in the roasting process and they cannot be used. I don't know of a recipe where they include grinding up the seeds. This could be happening. Also, you balance a mole with a sweetener, especially if you use bitter chocolate. They could have overdone the chocolate. Again, why do they serve bad mole when they should be tasting and adjusting it or not offering it?
As to your tequila, there was no lime involved? Old limes can taste like crap. I don't think plastic is the answer. Wrong tequila, something accidentally dripped into it, etc., is more likely.
As someone said about Sally's, if they have more customers than they can deal with they can do whatever they want. You had to wait for a table, so someone is liking it.

[lsnhc]

While I have not eaten at Geronimo (for that matter, I have not even been to Geronimo!), it is clear to me that they have become a "scene" destination downtown. Every time I drive by, there are crowds overflowing onto the front porch. It is no secret that restaurants derive their greatest profits from an active bar business, and from what has been written above, it seems quite clear that food has become secondary for the owners. While this is unfortunate, it is not unique nor will it be the last restaurant to realize that the profits from liquor can far exceed those from food.

[Scargod]

As I was saying just the other night, "If you have enough margaritas (or tequila shooters), before the food, any old Mexican food will be good. Could be applicable...

[danieljdwyer]

I honestly can't put my finger on how the mole was bad. Like everything else, I like moles to have distinguishable flavors. I have no idea if that is authentic or not, but I like to be able to taste the chocolate, the peppers, the garlic, and so forth, individually, not just muddled together. This had a very muddled, uniform flavor, like mole from a jar usually does - and maybe that was the issue, as it had that preserved kind of taste. It was not overly sweet, but did have that sort of artificial sweetener flavor. It was not bitter at all; if it was, I might have liked it. There was none of that nice chocolaty bitterness. The barely noticeable chocolate flavor was sort of Tootsie Roll like, and I didn't even like Tootsie Rolls when I was five. It was just plain bad. The kind of food where you put the first bite in your mouth, and just think, "Shit."
No lime in my tequila. I don't like stuff in my liquor. I watched the bartender pour it, and it came out of the right bottle. It didn't taste like another tequila, or even a bad tequila. It tasted the way plastic smells. Plastic is reactive. Glass is inert. I don't see why the plastic wouldn't make it taste funny.

[Scargod]

I think you have been drinking too much bad tequila! :)
Seriously, I worked with plastics for almost fourty years. They store some acids in polypropylene. Sure, some are reactive to alcohols, but I don't think ethanol and drinking cup materials react.
I have a suspicion that you were smelling a newly minted cup and that plastic smell overwhelmed your taste buds. You know, like the first time you unwrap or unfold something made of vinyl...
To quote experts: Seventy to seventy-five percent of what we perceive as taste actually comes from our sense of smell. Taste buds allow us to perceive only bitter, salty, sweet, and sour flavors. It's the odor molecules from food that give us most of our taste sensation.

[danieljdwyer]

I'll admit to a history of drinking the kind of tequila that involves licking your hand, sucking on a lime, and missing class the next day. But that's all in the past. I think.
I'm sure you're right that it was the plastic smell rather than taste that put me off. I tend not to make a distinction there, because the end effect is the same. I imagine that most of the "flavor" of good tequila is really scent.
You obviously know your plastics, so maybe you can tell me if an assumption I made is correct, or just some crap I came up with in a tequila induced illusion of scientific insight. Alcohol makes a very good carrier for scent. I assume then, that the alcohol would make the plastic smell more noticeable, or seem more pronounced, even if the two are not actually reacting chemically.

[Scargod]

I would concur that there is a possibility that if the plastic is exuding fumes that the alcohol in the tequila could pick it up and be a carrier. There are also plasticizers and other modifiers that can leach out, thus the BPA scare with baby bottles. That's usually when they get very hot.
My experience with clear drink cups is that they are pretty pure, brittle and prone to cracking. I think you smelled the styrene in the plastic. Think model airplanes: there are many perfectly clear styrene blends.

[shoes]

I liked the one meal I had at Geronimo. It has a good late menu - we went after a show at the Shubert so we did not eat a lot.

We had some specialty house cocktails and all got something different: chili, a chicken taco special, sliders and pulled pork. Only the pork was a dud - minced and definitely not pulled and slow-cooked. Friends of mine also really like it.