Relative standards

The other night, three of us tried the tasting menu at Heron's, a local restaurant of great ambition. As the dining room in the local luxury hotel, The Umstead, Heron's, like its host facility, labors under a public goal of earning the very highest ratings possible. For example, it has four AAA diamonds but wants five.

Our meal was quite good, and our service better than most. We had a very nice time.

As I was paying, however, the problem arose: our server spotted us as foodies and asked for our assessment of the meal. I responded by saying we had a very nice time, but he pressed for details. I asked him on what scale he wanted us to judge the place.

He said, the very highest.

On that scale, Heron's fell rather short. To cite just a few of the problems with the food, the pork belly skin wasn't crisp enough, while the interior wasn't juicy enough and was in fact overcooked. So was the tuna, which was also at least one and probably two grades below what it should have been. Several of the lamb medallions were cold in the center and were promised warm. The cheeses did not build properly and one, a feta, was as bad an example of its type as I've tasted in quite a while. And so on. On the service side, two servers did not know to serve from the left and remove from the right, one course went without explanation, the cheese server couldn't correctly name the sources of all three cheeses, and so on.

Did we sound like snobs? Probably.

But he asked us to measure him by the best possible standards, so we did just that.

Again, we had a good time, a very good time, and a delicious meal.

In dining, as in so many areas, standards are indeed relative.

Having said that, I will go back to Heron's for two reasons: the meal was good enough that we want to see where the new chef takes the place, and, more importantly, I love that they are aiming high and want to encourage that practice. If you aim for the stars and miss, often even the failures are worth celebrating.