Retro by Voltaggio

Description

Retro is a hotel restaurant concept from yet another celebrity chef; the Voltaggio brothers. They have a lot of dumb stuff like bicycles and records as decor; the idea is that the menu is comprised of dishes from the 70s and 80s, when restaurants were run by regular people.

Other than the weird nostalgia items, it's a pretty nice restaurant.

However I'm not giving them credit for the interior design; all they really did was redecorate Aureole in a very bad way.

Comfort food from your childhood (if you're pretty old) can be an interesting idea; except they've reimagined everything in a weird way; none of which I find particularly appealing.

I liked chicken pot pie, but not like this:

$29 for shrimp cocktail is outrageous enough (shrimp are not that expensive), but I certainly don't want this.

There's nothing retro about mac and cheese; their take on shells and cheese is downright strange:

I never liked Spaghetti-Os (or the ravioli either); this spaghetti and meatball is $35.

But the deal breaker for me is the Sole Meuniere, a favorite of mine that is sadly very hard to find in restaurants; and when you can find it the price is unacceptably high. It's a $10 piece of fish; they're charging $58 for it here.

Sole Meuniere is a french dish where sole is floured and cooked in a butter sauce. To finish you toss in some fresh parsley and give it a squeeze of lemon. Here they seem to service it with some sort of parsley puree (the menu tells you. nothing); not something I'm willing to lay out $58 to try.

This place might be fun to try at half the menu price; but frankly I'd rather get a swanson chicken pot pie for $3 and have it at home.