Thumbs-down: Chanto

Had a surprisingly lousy dinner tonight at Chanto on Seventh Avenue. We'd wanted Asian for tonight and would normally go to Sushi Samba, but I'd seen favorable reviews about Chanto and thought we'd try it out.

Service was spotty. L. ordered some sake while waiting for me to arrive (honestly it was the train, I left perfectly on time). The first sake she got was "off", stale or something else wrong with it. When she complained the staff argued with her before replacing with a different sake. On being seated there was a bit of a show of having servers help seat us (pull out chairs, unfold napkins), but then someone came by with wet towels to cleanse our hands. Cold wet towels. Normally these are warmed up if not heated to hot.

I ordered a beer which, on reflection after we left, also tasted stale, like it had been chilled and warmed repeatedly. It wasn't "bad" beer, just off (again).

For dinner we ordered the chicken wing dumplings and a kimchi dish as starters, and a black cod in miso (for me) and sushi sampler special for L. as our mains, with a side of Jyuga(?) potatoes. The dumplings were intended to be something resembling pot stickers, but inside a chicken wing. They were not bad, but I wouldn't order them again. L. thought the kimchi and sushi were fine, but not overwhelming. I liked the cod but found that the sauce on the asparagus to be rather heavy (and now, a couple of hours later, think the sauce was too rich for me).

The potatoes...took....for......ever to arrive. So long that the waitress had time to come by twice to apologize, with multi-minute breaks between each apology. On the second apology I asked that they just cancel the order since we'd completed our mains and were shifting from wanting desert to wanting to leave. Five minutes later the potatoes arrived. Now, I'm Irish and I know a thing about potatoes: these were actually pretty good potatoes (they're baked with some sort of glaze, perhaps even infused with butter), and had they arrived with the rest of our food I'd have one, possibly two less things to complain about. But they did not.

So, I don't recommend Chanto. The coup d'grace, if it was really needed, was seeing the tab at the end of the meal. We don't really flinch at having a nice dinner out once in awhile and our tastes in sake and wine (and Bombay Sapphire) can easily drive a bill over $200. Chanto's bill wasn't that high, but for what it was I'd expect better service and food quality.

We recovered slightly by walking over to Magnolia Bakery and grabbing some cupcakes for dessert.