Dinner at Boom Restaurant Westbrook
Last night my wife and I dined at Boom Restaurant in Westbrook. It is a neat little restaurant with great outdoor seating, overlooking the marina. My only small gripe about the outdoor seating is that there are no ceiling fans. All in all a great first impression, I thought we had found a gem. The menu read like a sort of semi boring continental seafood thing, with many shared starches and vegetables (which to me always looks lazy), julienned vegetables on every item is a little cheezy. I have been to restaurants with menus like this in the past, and been able to enjoy myself, even if I was eating "wedding food". This experience was different. We ordered the crispy shrimp app with tartar sauce. This was ok, the shrimp tasted slightly dirty, they were not overly crispy, but were definetly edible. My wife ordered the hangar steak with frites, and I the scallops with rice and the aformentioned julienned vegetables. This is where the meal took a definite turn for the worse. Although my scallops were fresh they were completely unseasoned, served on a bed of undercooked rice, with a sauce "ginger beurre blanc" that was completely flavorless. My wife's Hangar steak was cooked to a perfect medium rare, however the flavors were so horrible that it was inedible. Some sort of canned beef sauce, reduced to beyond syrupy, with a blue cheese cream sauce, what a horrible combination of flavors. This rendered the steak inedible. The "frites" were an insult to even McDonalds, they were like fried peelings of potato, not good at all. Owners of Boom if you are reading this, you have the potential for a great restaurant here, do yourselves a favor and hire a real chef!
