Last week my friends and I were at the Purple Cafe in downtown celebrating a friend's birthday. We wanted to try this place because it looks pretty cool with the nice wine rack in the middle of the restaurant. The place was pretty busy on a Thursday night. It's pretty easy to get reservations for the place. We were seated quickly, and water came soon after. The atmosphere is definitely a mixed crowd of all ages. It's one of those place where you dress up to be seen, very trendy.
Our waitress, gave us 3 menus. One for the wine list, another was the dinner menu, and then there is a small one of appetizers that you had to order in trio. We three different cheeses to try from the appetizer's menu, and they were all pretty tasty. I also ordered the Carpaccio, and some duck. Both the duck and Carpaccio were just ok.
My friend ordered a bottle of wine. When our waitress came to let us taste the wine we didn't like it at all. We asked her to recommend us another bottle but our waitress didn't know much about wine. She then calls on the wine expert from the restaurant to help us pick another bottle, which she did, and we liked the recommendation.
For our entrée, we all ordered the 4 course prixe fix meal. My first course was the beef tenderloins, second was the apple, Gorgonzola salad, the third course was the seared tuna, and lastly the dessert which was a brownie. The beef tenderloins weren't as tasty, it was lacking a little salt and seasoning. The salad was pretty simple and pretty good, but you can get this kind of salad any where. As for the tuna, it was dry, overcooked and did not taste fresh. I love tuna, but I barely touched it since it tasted pretty bad. The dessert was pretty good, two pieces of brownie sprinkled with some confetti sugar.
Overall? The food was really just ok. If you're there for wine and appetizers, I think it's a better deal and the selection is much better. The service was pretty good minus the inexperienced waitress. You can check out their webiste at www.thepurplecafe.com.
more