Marquee

So I attended the "friends and family" soft opening of Marquee Grill, Tre Wilcox' new restaurant in Highland Park Village, on Friday night. I technically did not qualify as either a friend or family but a friend who did qualify could not use her reservation so she gave them to me. I have great friends. :)

We arrived at 8:20 for our 8:30 reservation. They did not have our reservation on the list (I swear, I was not crashing) but no worries, they would find a place for us. Would we mind sitting at the bar until our table is ready? No problem, and we were escorted upstairs to the bar.

The bar area is quite large, modern and sophisticated. Lots of seating and the balcony is fantastic. It gives you a wonderful view of Highland Park Village and, during the holidays, it will be perfect place to look a the lights (as long as they put some heaters out there). Jason Kosmas, formerly of Bolsa, is in charge of the bar and, as you can expect, its focus is on pre-prohibition cocktails. So, whiskey for me!

I had some time to chitchat with the bartenders. In fact, I had quite a bit of time to chitchat with the bartenders since at 9:10, 40 minutes after our reservation, we still had not been sat. I learned all about the restaurant's insignia, which the bartenders call "the scarf dancing lady". It's apparently a sculpture in the theatre and can be seen etched on the wine glasses and on the bartenders' jackets. Speaking of the bartenders' jackets, the bartenders hate them. "I feel like I should be cleaning people's teeth," one said. "I feel like I should be in Weird Science," said another (who was much too young to have actually seen Weird Science in the theatre, sigh). I agree, the jackets are ill fitting and make the guys look like dentists. But at least the drinks were good.

By 9:15pm, I was about to chew off my arm, I was so hungry. I smiled at my dental hygienist, er, bartender, and asked if he could please check on our reservations. About 7 minutes later we were sat at a balcony table outside. It was a great night for patio dining so we felt as if the wait was worth it.

Now, it was Good Friday so I was pretty limited in what I could order since I could not have any poultry, pork or beef. The menu we had was also a limited representation of what the menu will be. Since it was a soft opening, which is meant to work out the kinks, I don't think it's really fair for me to critique the food. But I'm not going to lie, there were some hiccups. They ran out of one of the elements of my salad (which was overdressed), and I had to switch out my entree because they had run out of monkfish. My seared tuna appetizer and Bay of Fundy salmon entree were also both too salty. But those are things that will hopefully get worked out with time.

My main concern about Marquee is the menu we saw really wasn't anything I hadn't seen before. Is Wilcox playing it too safe? I'm not sure. Maybe I'm expecting too much from a 2x Top Chef contestant. Or maybe Wilcox just knows his audience. This is the first new restaurant in HPV in almost 2 decades, so maybe playing it safe is what HPV needs. But I don't think of NOSH as necessarily playing it safe and it's thriving regardless. Time will tell if this is the right strategy. I'm willing to check it out a few more times to find out.

Cheers!