For the past several years, I have counted Morrell among my few, favorite, consistently delicious restaurants in midtown. Unfortunately, with their new chef, that has changed. A friend and I went for dinner last night and found that the service was not good (no water refills, waiter disappears and does not check on how the food comes out, the wrong wine was poured and we had to send it back and request the one we had originally ordered) and the food was terrible. We both started with the beet salad which was an over salted, barely edible pile of greens with about a eight tiny beet cubes and some chevre crumbles. For our entrees, my friend had the Udon and I had the mushroom risotto with duck confit. The seafood in the Udon was so salty that my friend had to send her dish back; my risotto and duck confit was edible, but the risotto tasted primarily of black pepper and had no depth of flavor and the duck was overcooked and dry. The risotto reminded me of the Lipton noodles that I used to eat in college which only required me to add hot water - in fact, I think the Lipton noodles were better ... I have never published a review of anything before, but my great disappointment with last night's dinner has spurred me to let people know that this is no longer the restaurant it used to be.
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