IVY

We went to go see Eddie Izzard the other day and man it was a great show. They man is an epileptic seizure of comedic prowess. He was all over the place which kind of fit for the entire night. Before the show we ate at the IVY restaurant in downtown Boston. The meals were hit or miss for the entire group. The wine on the other hand was pretty good. They do have a good selection of wines by the glass only costing $9. I ordered the scallops for myself and shared a basket of herb fries. The scallops were grilled, the unfortunate thing about them was that they were not really cleaned well, about 1/2 the bites contained grains of sand in them. They sat on a bed of what they called potato risotto but was nothing more than a finely cubed potatoes in a cream sauce. It was tasty, I just did not understand the word "risotto" The fries were tasty although there was not much herb in the herb fries and they were extremely salty. After brushing off a little of the salt they were good.

The ambiance of the restaurant was pleasant overall. The contemporary style mixed with wrought iron made it feel like you were dining in an outdoor terrace in a modern villa. As you look around the space you can see that they took extra care to pick out some great accessories and materials for the space. From the wrought iron fence mounted on the exposed brick to the dark stained wood tiled wall at the entrance. Then you look up, the first chandelier was a nice drum contemporary piece and then next is "the want a be wrought iron" (but not really, it was a poor fake) and then a crystal chandler. Coming from a design profession I understand how hard it is to make sure that the people that you are designing for select nice fixtures that go with the scheme of the space. I am hoping that this was the case because the light fixtures just baffled me. The vinyl high back benches with integrated planters at the top, planted with a semi realistic fake ivy, were pretty comfortable. Not really sure that you needed to literally smack the people over the head with the use of ivy in the restaurant named IVY.

So here is my review.
Food: better than decent but needs to be refined.
Portions: nice but priced a little on the high size for what you get.
Wine selection: good and pretty diverse.
Atmosphere: pleasant and only people who care about consistency in design will have a problem with it.
Service: has a long way to come (actually it was pretty poor) but that is a rant of another day.

You may ask would you go back? Well I would go back if a friend who liked wine wanted to grab a drink after work but to go and sit down and eat, probably not.