I did eat at Market one of the first weeks it was open. While the food was good I do admit the service was not. I thought it was just becuase it recently opened.
----- Original Message ---- From: Hinge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 12:47:38 PM Subject: [AsburyPark] Market in the Middle review in the APP. Complete BS Below is the review of Market in the Middle from the Press. Personally, I love Market in the Middle. It's one of the best things to happen in AP in ages. I go there several times a week. The people who work there are great. I love the eclectic blend of things they sell. I've never eaten at the restaraunt, but i've heard nothing but good things about it. If I ever decide to enter the dating world again, Market in the Middle will be one of the first places I take a date to. Now here's the BS review... "It's a madhouse at the entrance to Market in the Middle. When did the world start congregating on Cookman Avenue in Asbury Park? There's overflow onto the sidewalk, where folks are bravely dining in the chill. I square my shoulders and walk inside. We have reservations, thank goodness. Spur-of-the- moment types are being told the wait is two hours. There's no room at the bar and no room to gather around the helter-skelter layout of tables and shelves. I'm relieved when we're seated, even though it's at an awkwardly positioned table, with racks sporting kitchenware for sale inches from my head. I'm afraid to move, afraid I'll topple a display, and the poor floor crew can't help but bump into the backs of our chairs as they try to maneuver. Do they ever say "sorry" or "excuse me"? I'm not sure; the noise level is too high to hear the person next to me, let alone a server ricocheting by. Market in the Middle, for all its deliberate casualness, is not a place to relax. The odd layout, with its mix of bunched-up tables and for-sale merchandise, doesn't allow for a sense of convivial community. If you're seated in the market part of this bistro-tavern- store, you may feel like an afterthought; if you're at a table astride the bar, you may feel shoved in. A half hour after being seated, I'm feeling put out: We've ordered a well-priced prosecco from the wine list, but a different prosecco is presented. I inspect it, register it as something likely higher in price than I wish to spend, and ask if the prosecco ordered could be delivered. Several minutes lapse; the desired prosecco arrives. But the bottle is room temp; sparkling wine needs to be served chilled. There's another wait. Market in the Middle's wine guru arrives, pushing a Portuguese bubbly. Or perhaps, the guru says, "Maybe you want a sweet wine?" I reconsider the wine list, order a Spanish cava, and get shaken off again, like a pitcher rejecting a catcher's call. OK, I'll cut to the chase: The wine fridge was on the fritz, so nothing I want is going to be available at the proper temperature. The deal is we take the Portuguese bubbly or well, we never really learn the options. Which should have been explained to us from the get- go. We go with the Portuguese sparkler. Nice, no cigar. Nor can I give a tout to the eclectic menu and the scattershot service at Market in the Middle, the brainchild of veteran restaurateur Marilyn Schlossbach. The menu covers the global waterfront of cuisines, and the wait staff runs from end to end of the hither-and- yon space. No one person was in charge of our table, and it showed: no water refills, no wine poured, no silverware replaced, no one keeping an eye on when to bring what course. We'd barely tucked into appetizers when entrees were brought, returned to the kitchen, then delivered again and, finally, awarded to us after we'd finished starters. We exchanged apps plates for our main courses and proceeded. By this time, a very hard, ergonomically cruel chair was at war with my rump. My taste buds were at war with the very nearly duck-less "roasted duck over Grand Manier raviolis with a fig duck confit," largely because the cloying port glaze and the duck-free, fig-filled pasta pouches were achingly sweet. Olives billed to be stuffed with asiago are heavily breaded balls of chopped tasteless olives and melted cheese, with a thickish, tasteless mayonnaise offered as a dip. A plate of sliced potatoes, cornichons and onions doused with melted raclette is pure comfort food, however, reminiscent of the fondue- style dish served in Switzerland or the Savoie. It's tasty and simple. A salad given the Caesar moniker is chock-full of roasted red peppers, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, cabbage and onions doused with a tomato-basil "Caesar" dressing. A Caesar, it's not, but it is satisfying, if you flick to the side the stale croutons. We work hard to flag down a server to grant us spoons for our bouillabaisse, and are glad we prevail: A good lot of properly cooked fishes, including shrimp, cod, salmon and mussels, mingle with nuggets of sausage in a shellfish-scented broth that swarms around a bed of risotto. The toasted slices of baguette are burned on the bottom, but who cares when lovely fish meets lovely accents? Meanwhile, chicken filmed with a meek basil puree and served over a bowl of spinach-garlic tortelloni washed with arugula pesto falters: The two major elements of the dish are overcooked, rendering the chicken dry and the pasta limp. Good-quality wild salmon topped with a rash of olives, tomatoes and garlic deserves better: The accents are not uniformly chopped, so bursts of olive or tomato or garlic drown out the admirably gamy taste of the lukewarm fish (which suffered from that re- delivery issue). Dried-out couscous is the so-so side show. Another dish with great potential was ruined by a technical lapse in the kitchen. Who dared to spray tinny-tasting, air-filled, frothy topping on the dynamite rice pudding? If that's done to you, scrape it off and enjoy the flecks of coconut and ginger energizing the creamy-textured pudding. Skip the goofy chocolate-covered, ice cream-filled "bamba" balls in favor of a satisfying cappuccino creme brulee sporting a burnt-sugar crackling crust. Market in the Middle may be suffering from success: Hey, if all these people are trying to get in, it must be good, right? But its flaws, from uncomfortable accommodations to careless service to inconsistent cooking, are too many for serious diners to ignore. It's a scene and, as we know, scenes without substance can go quiet quickly." ____________________________________________________________________________________ The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php
