Carmen's Restaurant dining review
With the weather conditions being so spectacular in the last week, restaurants with outside dining make for likely alternatives. And times like this tend to be when Carmen's specifically comes to mind. Think about that outdoor concrete courtyard awash in sunlight, cloudless blue skies above and the stroking lap lap lap involving little waves on a stony beachfront several feet below.
Although Carmen's consistently underperforms on both food restore, we'd like to commend a Annadale restaurant on how much there are improved in the last two years. That said, we'll take the good with the not so good and admiration the place for staying in enterprise for so many years.
On finger foods, "Chorizos" was an excellent dish together with the sausages served sliced and melted crisp. A platter for 2 (called "entremes") featured those pleasant chorizos, poached mussels in the shell coated using salsa of green and red bell spice up concasse with egg white slivers, including a hunk of moist chicken with an unappetizing, Crisco looking layer between the bread crumb coating and meats. There were also several teensy weensy filled mushrooms on the plate, mine for $16.95.
AWE Photo/Pamela Silvestri"Entremes" for 2.
Atmosphere: Outdoor patio is great care decorated with potted roses and Chinese Buy Christian Louboutin Cheap lanterns but the stunning ocean view is probably among the best a Staten Island diner has to offer. Inside there are several large rooms.
Prices: Hors d'oeuvers: $4.95 $20.95. Landlubber items: $14.89 $29.95. Entrees: $18.95 $38.96. (Lunch is about half the amount with a leaner portion dimensions.)
Drinks: Basic wine and also beer menu, sangria by the window or pitcher, and a classic drink list that includes a "grasshopper,In "brandy Alexander" and other cocktails that may be old to some, trendy to others.
Time: Open daily for lunch plus dinner.
Specs: A small factor to negotiate at the door might Mbt Shoes Perth Store be unwieldy for wheelchairs. Ample parking except on breaks. All major cards accepted.
Shrimp cocktail was respectable, nonetheless "Nachos" on the Mexican side on the menu was more like "nacho.Inch It was a plate of merely one corn tortilla cut into wedges lead with melted cheese and a small meat Mont Blanc Pen Australia presented over a small mound of shredded lettuce and also a nicely fiery, quartered sliced Serrano spice up. I'm not one to quibble on price ranges but $4.95 for this sent the envelope.
Black bean soup was one sizing. Yet regular offerings just like Galacian (kale, potato and poultry stock) and chicken noodle soups (fresh pulled poultry and nice flavor) Louboutin Pigalle 120 Sizing were surprising winners. As for hot a pot of soup on tap during the the summer months, we had hoped for a cold variety: Gazpacho comes to mind since it's the summer. But oh well.
That brings under consideration some ironies about Carmen's. It has a sturdy seafood component and touts Wednesday "lobster nights" lobster starts during $17.95 with choice of grain, potato or vegetable in addition to soup or salad. Clients can order one, two or three lobsters at a clip for different rates but the inventory only capabilities 1 pounders. It seems likely that lobster lovers would take pleasure in a 1 or 2 pounder. Sangria should be the anchor of the drink menu. Still over several visits, the item tasted more like grape liquid, perhaps because it was so watered down with ice, with no impressive flavors from, say, a quality wine or perhaps brandy. Hot Mbt Shoes Clearance Sale beans bread had little garlic oil taste. That's an item that, in my Mbt Shoes Online Australia view, Louboutin Replica should be unctuous and buttery with galore parsley and intense flavor coming from chunks of fresh garlic oil. But it's a detail listed here where you shrug and point out, "Whatever."
Items that are OK and fresh but are tight on presentation: Shrimp plancha presented in the layer in garlic white vino sauce, broiled filet of sole by using bread crumbs and garlic cloves, Vegetable Paella with lots of rice and also a handful of veggies like sequence beans and bitty 'shroom quarters, plus "Riojana" brown sauced dishes like the veal plus pork chop varieties.
The spanish language fried potatoes are great unsalted pad fries served hot and also crunchy. Broccoli was nicely garlicked and served as alabama dente stalks.
Some desserts just weren't in stock. Flabby, gelatinous flan, a staple sweet in a Spanish themed diner, was unfortunate. grasshopper, mud glide, orgasm, etc., dated cocktails depending on the diner's perspective) featured about the front page of the menu. Contributing to the disappointment was a lack of focus on detail: A curtain delayed by a paper clip, your greeting by a funky fragrance going on in the bar region over several visits, computers in a room adjacent to your dining room who were eating meals throughout Vibram Shoes Review service. Perhaps these matters may very well be blamed on what appeared to be absentee managing.
Even though the food was just Okay, Carmen's is far below what standards should be in one of Staten Island's advanced waterside locations. But the diner, even during lunch, seems to have an abundance of business, especially on sunshine.
