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LTH,

We recently went to VOLO, a brand-spanking-new wine bar on Roscoe, so new in fact, they didn't have their liquor license.



We had the pleasure of MAG, TPA and Thor's company, who had been a few days earlier and, after having an appetizer of bone-marrow gave Ellen and I a call thinking it would be our kind of place, they were right.


VOLO's menu, at least until they get their liquor license, consists of small plates of nicely done, imaginative, somewhat upscale offerings. For example Seared Diver scallops with quail egg and American Sturgeon caviar.


Shaved fennel, rare sliced beef, spicy greens with crushed black pepper.


Walnut-crusted Halibut, turnips, red radish w/walnut vinaigrette.


Chilled oysters, Green Apple granita/Champagne mignonette oysters.


Fingerling potatoes, apple-wood smoked bacon and spring vegetables.


Thor's favorite of the evening, an off-menu pizza of cheese and arugula.


Duck confit w/crisp potato and roasted garlic, though, good as it sounds, was my least favorite of the evening.


In addition to gratis cured olives, we also had very good mussels, a trio of spreads, the cod brandade was great, olive tapenade good and the roasted garlic so-so, and Stewed escarole with white beans, which, with the addition of a little sea salt was delicious.


Speaking of salt, I really like VOLO's salt service, Sea salt, Hawaiian Alaea salt, pinkish from clay, and mixed peppercorns. (see bone-marrow picture)

The chef, Stephen Dunne, formerly of Spago, MK and, before Chicago, Postrio in San Francisco, is an enthusiastic and, in my opinion, talented chef. My second favorite dish of the evening, after the bone-marrow, was something I had never had before, Cured foie gras.

When we expressed interest in how Cured foie gras was made Stephen was all to happy to demonstrate. Lightly smash fresh deveined lobes of foie gras, sprinkle with sea salt and sugar.


Drizzle Jack Daniel's over the mix and refrigerate 24-hours.


Press into molds, chill, and serve, at least at VOLO that evening, with blackberry, ver jus and toast.


One word of caution, the Cured foie gras is a bit salty as, unlike gravlox, the cure is not wiped off. Eaten by itself it's over the top salty, at least for me, when combined with the blackberry on toast it's really quite extraordinary.

We finished our meal in fine form with the Previously mentioned Humbodt Fog, Crabrales and Red Hawk.


VOLO has a large back yard area, which they are in the process of making into a comfortable outdoor dining area and prices are reasonable given the quality and care of the ingredients. We all enjoyed our meal, VOLO even has Thor's seal, or should I say smile, of approval.


VOLO will soon, if not already, have their liquor license, call if you plan on BYOB.

Volo Restaurant Wine Bar
2008 W Roscoe
Chicago, IL
773-348-4600

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Thanks for the great review! Volo is a new venture by the owners of Kitsch'n. Looking forward to trying it out.

We tried Volo last night; they have their liquor license now and were in full mode with their concept of small plates and wine flights. Which we completely ignored in favor of ordering a bunch of stuff real fast to keep the kids in line, although I did have a very nice pinot noir (ordered too harriedly to even hear who the winery was).

Standouts were a pizza with smoked bacon, fancy mushrooms and goat cheese, really nice crispy thin crust and smoky bacon flavor, and the scallops dish which GWiv shows a picture of above, which was terrific. I also liked the Alderman Moore foie gras special he depicts above, and did not think it too salty (though you did want to eat it with the sweet stuff).

A salad was highly acidic, presumably to go with wine better, and I was just so-so on the spreads assortment, the roasted garlic-honey spread was great, the olives perfectly fine, the cod brandade tasted like cold mashed potatoes. Dessert doesn't seem to be an interest of Volo, we ordered the one and only dessert, a strawberry-rhubarb bread pudding, and found it rather heavy, even by the standards of bread pudding.

The only downside was that, my kids being older than Thor, I had hopes they'd actually try some of that stuff and instead they turned up their noses and had an entirely bread-based meal (including bread pudding). More scallops for me, I guess.

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Had a Friday night dinner at Volo

Crowded, but we didn't have to wait. Took seats at the bar and the service was great. Everyone was pretty knowledgeable about the food and pretty jovial.

We ordered the tapenades and the bone marrow for apps. Tapenades were solid, they said they roast their garlic for 10 hours... very creamy and rich. I'm surprised I haven't seen the roast marrow bones at more places, its such an outstanding, rich and decadent appetizer, yet so simple (and certainly must make a restaurant a killing on margins). The bread was fantastic (we asked and they said Fulton Bakery, tho they weren't sure if it was a commercial-only bakery).

Cured foie gras and duck confit for entrees - again, perfect, rich (theme for the night) version of confit. The foie gras was interesting, I hadn't tasted anything quite like it before. I had read GWiv's explanation below, and pretty much agree. It is outstanding, a bit salty, but with the bread, microgreens and blackberry compote it was perfect.

If I knew more about wines, I'd go into detail, but suffice it to say I ordered a flight of Pinot Noir and a couple glasses of Bonny Doon Midnight Terror or whatever it was called. All of it tasty, nice pours and well explained as one would expect from bartenders at a wine bar.

Really, I can see myself continuing to return for the bone marrow quite often... I Gotta try the oysters and the scallops as well.

We went this past Saturday night (14 May) around 6:30 and it was not crowded at all. There were reserved tables for 2 large groups, but even after they came it wasn't terribly noisy. We didn't find the foie too salty, but we also did eat it with the sweet stuff. It was yummy

It will be wonderful when the outside space is open.

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UPDATE:
Volo's enclosed rear patio is now open!
It's quite a beautiful place to enjoy a glass of wine and/or some food.

I actually posted this a while back (July 24) on Chowhound only:

I finally tried Volo Saturday and enjoyed it quite a bit, although I question (albeit slightly) whether the dining experience was worth the price paid. I think that I prefer Avec a little, and find Avec to be a little less expensive, although perhaps not as creative.

We arrived at the restaurant at about 8pm (on a Saturday), worried that we'd have to wait a long time. We were so wrong. There were several tables open such that I'm a little concerned about their future. They only take reservations for parties of five or more though, perhaps scaring some off.

My friend and I shared four small plates (they offer only small plates), a cheese plate (we selected 5 cheeses) and a dessert. For small plates, we had the shaved fennel and rare roast beef w/ spicy greens and crushed black pepper. The roast beef was perfectly cooked rare as advertised and well matched with the fennel, although perhaps just a tad undersalted.

The duck confit with crisp potato and roasted garlic puree was very good (although maybe lacking in potato and garlic?) and came with a bit of a red wine reduction (definitely could have used a little more of the reduction -- it was fantastic).

The halibut with summer vegetables and anchovy was also quite tasty, as were the seared scallops with a quail egg and some American sturgeon caviar (perhaps my favorite of the four).

For dessert, we split a chocolate brownie (dense and relatively moist) which was served with a side bowl of chocolate mousse (more of a milk chocolate mousse -- I would have preferred a bit richer and less sweet) topped with some sort of chewy chocolate-hazelnut nougat which really made the dish because of the different textures.

Service was fine and friendly, but perhaps slightly less polished than the cooking. Wine service offered some nice flights (of 3 wines each), although I think their practice of bringing all 3 wines out at a time was a little awkward. I'm looking forward to trying it again -- there were so many interesting dishes on the menu that I might just have to return a couple of times. You can check out the menu at www.volorestaurant.com (although not all menu items are listed online).

After meaning to get to Volo for quite some time, the girlfriend and I made it over for dinner last night. I have to say, we were impressed.

It doesn't seem like much as changed their since the initial reviews. Most of the menu items discussed here are still on the menu. Also, there's still nothing to identify each wine in a flight once the waiter or waitress has left the table after explaining each wine.

Food-wise, we started with the beet skewers and the steak tartare. Steak tartare is one of my all time favorite dishes so I was pretty excited to see it on the menu. Volo's rendition is good, although it's a bit too spicy for my taste. The beet skewers were a pleasant surprise. I really wasn't expecting much, but they were quite tasty and provided a pleasant and sweet counterpoint to the spicy steak tartare. The skewers were served with an absoloutely delicious mound of warm goat cheese.

Next we moved on to the bone marrow and a tuna niccoise salad. For me, the salad was the biggest flop of the night. The tuna was advertised as seared, but was cooked a step or 2 past seared. The salad was also permeated by a taste that I couldn't quite put my finger on, all I know is that I didn't like it. But, as much as a I didn't enjoy the salad, I absolutely fell in love with the bone marrow. My only other experience with marrow came last month at Per Se, so I was interested in trying a more humble version. And boy was I happy with the meaty, fatty, marrowy goodness that they're serving up. Even my girlfriend who is no fan of meat was digging in with her little spoon and a piece of toast. The only thing lacking was the salt service described earlier in the thread which was nowhere to be found (nor was the selection of dips also described earlier).

We wrapped up the meal with a very nice cheese plate which contained 4 out of the 6 cheeses being offered last night. We enjoyed them all with the exception of one, which was a very strong bleu (can't recall the name).

In terms of wine, we each ordered a flight; I had the Pinot Noir and the girlfriend had the riesling. We were both happy with our choices.

I was at Volo this weekend, my first venture into the place, and it was great. Aside from some really odd music selections (The Cars??), a miss on the pizza we ordered (sausage with goat cheese) it was an outstanding experience.

We started with three cheeses to compliment our Italian Red flight-- a Barbera, a Chianti, and a great red from Valpolicella-- with the Valpolicella being the stand-out of the three. Great velvety finish, extremely smooth, and just all around refreshing. The cheeses complimented the wines fairly well, the winner of the cheeses seemed to be the Manchego, although the fresh Mozzarella was a close second.

Of the small plates we ordered the Spinach, onion and cheese tart was the biggest letdown. None of the flavors really popped for me, but this could have been a misstep to order something that I feel I could have capably handled at home. In my mind I had the taste of Bistro Campagne's onion tart, and that just didn't measure up. The rare, thin sliced beef was excellent and more than made up for the Spinach selection. It was seasoned so well, with the fennel not overpowering anything and the pepper really working well with the wine.

The pizza we ordered was pretty bad. It arrived from the kitchen piping hot, and the toppings were plentiful and flavorful, but the last two pieces were nearly inedible because the crust was so hard and chewy. We were trying to figure out if it was premade crust and then reheated or what exactly went wrong, because it was an effort to get through the remaining pieces.

The service was attentive, and you definitely were not rushed. When we left around 9 there were people lined up to get in...so I hope their success continues....and they fix their pizza.

Went to Volo last night and enjoyed the food very much (with one significant exception), but the service was simply lousy.

I started off with the rare sliced beef with fennel and haricots vert. This was fantastic. The fact that I love fennel with almost anything does not hurt, but I really loved the very tender and substantial pieces of beef.

I tried my friend's hearts of palm, avocado and oil-cured tomatoes which I found tasty, although not very exciting, in my opinion.

I also ordered the roasted marrow bones with toast which was so rich and flavorful.

My friend ordered the pizza with goat cheese, applewood-smoked bacon and goat cheese. The crust is very cracker-like, very different than the usual pizza crust, but good. The toppings are the real attraction. Ample quantities of cheese, bacon and mushrooms that made for one of the best pizza topping combinations I have ever had.

For dessert, we split a chocolate tasting plate. There was a wonderful chocolate-dried cherry-nut concoction similar to a mound of Raisinets, but much better due to the fine dark chocolate. This particular piece was at room temperature whereas everything else on the plate seemed to have been pulled from the freezer (why would you do that to chocolate) -- very hard and very cold. The peanut butter cup would have been excellent if not frozen, as would the mocha truffle (the hazelnut truffle was so cold I could not taste any hazelnut). Very disappointing.

Service was extremely poor -- friendly when our waitress appeared out of thin air, which was rare. In general, our food was served by bus boys (one who could hardly pronounce what we ordered so he just showed us the plates and let us pick which one we ordered. Nobody ever cared to ask us if we liked any of the food. Was it very crowded? No . . . not at all. Perhaps our waitress had phone calls to make, I don't know. But when I go out to eat and I'm paying good prices, I expect good food (which I got) and good service. Needless to say, the service dampened an otherwise fine meal.

I haven't been back since my one and only visit in Fall '05. The food was a big shrug and thus, not a good value for the money. We did enjoy the wine flights, though. For my girlfriend and me, it wasn't good enough to be worth trying again, but I could certainly see others enjoying it a lot.

My sentiments exactly - Volo survives based on its chefs and its busboys and in spite of its servers. The last two times I have been there I have loved the food and found some gems on the wine list but have felt like I interrupted a private staff party. One server in particular is downright obnoxious - she served us on one occasion and was behind the bar on another and both times was rude and loud and MIA for looonnnggg periods. Management actually seems to encourage this behavior, or at the very least does nothing to stop it.

Fillay

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Haven't been to Volo--and won't go now, because service is important to me--but this piques my interest in a general way. Namely, how is it possible that the same management which knows (and cares) enough to hire excellence in the kitchen hires (and supports) incompetence in the dining room? The former impulse would seem to be driven by love for the customer, the latter by hate.

Interesting. We haven't had bad service at Volo. Not that we go there frequently, but when the kitchen was slow once (we were there and there was a party of 16 having a set meal), we even got a free appetizer from the server.

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My wife and I ate at Volo the other night, and I must say that it was one of the more enjoyable meals we've had in a long time. The service was excellent. Our server was enthusiastic, knowledgable, and even hooked us up with some dessert wines!! As far as the food - we split a beet salad and stuffed calamari for apps. I had the seabass with swiss chard and my wife, the rabbit dish. Besides the rabbit being slightly dry - the food was great. And the Austrian red at $29 was a heck of a deal. We will return for sure.

My friends and I had a great time at Volo this past friday. The service was great- we had one of those waiters who knew exactly when to show up at the table, and when to leave us alone. He made some really nice wine recommendations as well. We also had the cheese plate, the mushroom pizza, and the beet salad, all of which were lovely.

The only problem with the evening was the smell when we left- oddly, I got home and realized that absolutely everything I was wearing, including my coat, was soaked with the stench of cooking oil. I've left Geja's smelling less like oil. I cannot imagine why this happened- there wasn't an exceptionally strong smell of oil that I noticed while we were there. Any thoughts? Anyone else had this experience? It was truly bizarre.

Since there are a few negative comments about Volo's service upthread, I wanted to note that in my last three visits, service has been wonderful. Warm and friendly in a very genuine way, and while some of the servers are young and relatively food-naive, they seem to have a passion for learning about what they serve, explaining it articulately to customers, and trying their absolute best to please. I find these qualities all-to-rare in restaurants, and they have added greatly to my dining enjoyment at Volo.

One food note too: get to Volo before they take the pizza with peas, sweet onions, and parmesan off the menu! It's heavenly.

There hasn't been much written about Volo on this board for awhile, so here's a bump.

The wife and I had a great meal at Volo last night, probably my favorite out of the many times we've been there. We started with three of the small plates. First was the prosciutto rocket, which was thinly sliced prosciutto wrapped around arugula and served with pine nuts and Gorgonzola. Next we had yellowtail tataki, which had nice thick slices of yellowtail that had just been barely seared. The quality of the fish rivaled and yellowtail that I've eaten at sushi bars in Chicago in some time. Third were the roasted veal marrow bones, which were delicious as always.

The wife went with a roasted beet salad as her main, which she seemed to enjoy. I had the crispy quail, which is a whole quail that is cut into quarters and then tempura-ed. The quail is served with tempura green beans and a maple/pomegranate vinaigrette. Crazy delicious.

We finished things off with a cheese plate of manchego, epoisses, and Humboldt Fog.

Wine was spot on as always. We had a bottle of 2004 Domaine La Manarine, which is one of our favorites on Volo's list. We finished with a couple of glasses of Moscato d'asti with our cheese.

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An amuse bouche at breakfast is called a Bloody Mary - Scott Manlin

Just wanted to take a moment to offer my experience at Volo. We went here yesterday for dinner. It differed a little bit from those who wrote about it in this thread, but take it as you will.

A note on the service: generally good. First of all, we made a reservation at the last minute, and they were very accommodating about getting us in that night. I appreciated that. Our server wasn't super-fast, but we never felt like we were waiting an inordinately long amount of time. We also had our menus so long that, eventually, I put them down by my purse until we'd ordered everything. The only other "hiccup" was getting our San Pellegrino with ice in the glass (which we asked them to omit). Not a huge deal by any means, since we'd ordered the water from a different server.

We sat out on the back (covered) patio which has a nice ambiance. There are four little semi-private areas you can sit in with low tables, and regular 4-tops spread throughout. We sat at a regular table since we knew we'd be eating a full meal. The tables are a little small for a group of 4, considering at one point we had 12 glasses on the table, plus plates & silverware, plus the dishes. Still, it was nice to be on the patio.

Onto the food:

I liked the bread service. The bread was warm and soft, and the garlic-infused olive oil was very good. However, those little cups they put the oil in makes it really difficult to pour it on your plate without spilling it (!) Or maybe we're all just klutzy, I don't know.

We ordered four small plates, which came out mostly individually, so we were able to sample off each plate as they came. Our first was the cheese plate, and we got the six-cheese option. I thought everything on the plate was really good with one exception, and I think that was just a taste thing. After the cheese plate came mussels, which were in a garlic and butter sauce. I personally found the mussels to be very good; not really "fishy," if you will.

After that, we received our order of brioche with sake-scented apple compote and "complimentary" foie gras. (What can I say? I love ordering illegal food.) This was probably the weakest part of the meal, in my opinion. The foie gras was served very cold and was much more firm in texture than I am accustomed to. I'm certainly not a foie gras or pate expert, however, so it's hard for me to say whether that was odd. (Maybe they still doing the cured foie gras that GWiv spoke of in the OP?) What was odd to me was the taste of the foie gras, which had an almost "freezer-burn" taste to it, as if a) it wasn't fresh, and b) it had been sitting in the back of the freezer for too long. It was actually my friend who pointed this fact out, and I realized he would probably remember what foie gras generally tastes like, because he'd been to the Sweets and Savories foie gras dinner with me. (Other than that, we're not particularly goose liver aficionados.)

After that, we received our order of bone marrow, which none of us had ever had before, and we decided to give a go. The bone marrow actually came out just like in GWiv's picture at the top of this post. I'd have to say that bone marrow is probably ... an acquired taste, if at all. It definitely had a meaty, interesting flavor to it (one friend compared it to beef jerky). I don't know if I can pinpoint what it reminded me of, but it's probably not something I would ever make the effort to order again. I don't think it was poorly prepared. Just not my cup of tea.

I was still hungry at that point, so we went ahead and ordered entrees after that. I ordered the crispy quail with tempura green beans, baby greens, and a maple-pomegranate sauce. My biggest argument about the entrees is that, for their price, they really weren't much bigger than the small plates. The quail was fairly decent, very juicy and tender, though it was covered in a tempura-breading similar to the green beans, which kind of seemed unnecessary. I liked the green beans, but overall felt that they had been a bit too skimpy on the sauce, which really gave a really nice accent to the rest of the dish.

The DH ordered lamb chops, which came with a blue-cheese gratin. I can't remember the entire description of the plate. He seemed relatively content with that, again, his only complaint being the small portion. The lamb chops themselves were baby chops, and there were only two of them. I'm not generally a portion-complainer, but when I asked to try a little bit of his, he balked, given how much he had to work with. (He did eventually hand over a small portion, which I felt was decent.)

My friend ordered the pumpkin-ginger soup off the small plates menu for her entree, which, when served, had (what we thought was) a balsamic swirl running through it. This made for lovely presentation, but the soup was less than savory, really. We all had a little taste. It just didn't quite work.

My other friend ordered a flatbread pizza with fingerling potatoes and mushrooms and maybe goat cheese (?) I'm not exactly sure what was on it, but it was definitely an excellent choice.

Since I haven't commented on it yet: the wine. I, myself, only had a little bit of wine, but my friends both ordered flights and the DH had a couple glasses. I think all of us were impressed by the wine. Good choices, decent price point -- probably the highlight of the meal, really.

Overall, my feelings about this place is that, while it wasn't awful, it was just okay. If I was in the area and wanted a place to get some decent wine and a couple small plates, yes. However, I couldn't see myself making this a destination choice again.

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"Great food is like great sex. The more you have the more you want." ~Gael Greene

My husband and I went to Volo Friday night for the first time in a long time and it reminded us of why we need to go more often. We used to frequent it when we lived in Roscoe Village but now that we're further north we just don't think of it as often.

The wine: We each did a flight and shared them. Washington State reds and Italian reds. The mid-priced choice from each flight was our fave, so we followed up the flights with a glass of each.

Steak tartare - a very fun first taste and a good amount for $4. As mentioned by another poster, it's pretty spicy, which we loved but given that there's no mention of heat on the menu, kind of a surprise.
Bone marrow - delish as always.
Duck & Blue Cheese Pizza (which they now call "rustic flatbreads" - they used to call them pizzas, right?) - very good. Duck was tasty, although the blue cheese, oddly, did not really show up.
Curried butternut squash fritters - whoa. yum. creamy & soft on the inside, incredibly flavorful, with a delicately crunchy batter on the outside. Go to Volo. Get these.
Braised Kobe Beef w/ Egg noodles - this was the wild card of the night. We asked what cut of meat this was, we were told petite filet (which, confusing to me, doesn't really have anything to do with a regular filet, so the waiter brought me a drawing of a cow with the cuts outlined and showed me what we were workin' with) This was a lot like upscale stroganoff. Beef was very tender small chunks in a complex, delicious sauce, but nothing about it screamed "I am Kobe!"

No room for dessert in food form, so we split a glass of a Sauternes-like dessert wine and a port.

Service was very attentive. And because it's the little things in life that make all the difference, I have to point out that they (without any prompting) gave the two of us a 4 top to eat at rather than a small two person table, despite the fact that the restaurant was more or less full when we arrived at 7:30. I'm not sure why they did it, but having all that extra room and table space (and distance from other diners - it's loud in there) was a huge bonus.

Serene and pretty as the rear garden is at VOLO, I usually opt for the dog-friendly front patio, where today I once again enjoyed a meal with my boy. The weather and the company carried what was an otherwise lackluster meal.

Bread and oil came quickly, representative of the excellent service I had throughout. Unfortunately, the bread itself seemed like a boring supermarket baguette, with a barely discernable crust and a dense interior. The oil had chunks of what looked like roasted garlic, but was oddly devoid of any garlic (or other) flavor.

Bread and garlic-less oil:



I started with crispy veal sweetbreads and chicken livers, which were coated in something fine-textured like wheat germ and served with thick buttermilk dressing and some kind of gastrique. The main problem with the dish was that the organs were seriously overcooked, rendering them dry, almost crumbly, and relatively flavorless.

Crispy sweetbreads and chicken livers:



Inside of the very dry chicken livers:




Next up was the sweet pea flatbread with onions and parmesan, a dish I have enjoyed very much in the past at VOLO. The recipe for the crust must have changed, and I did not enjoy the new version. It had a texture and flavor almost exactly like cannoli shells. I felt like I was eating sweet pea cookies. Weird. The ingredients in the topping were pretty good, and I think I would have enjoyed them much more on crostini.

Pea, onion, parmesan flatbread:




I'll be back to VOLO, because the front patio is a nice, quiet, dog-friendly spot to read a good book and enjoy some wine. The meal wasn't great, but the company was...

The Boy, wishing he didn't have to stay behind the gate

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I had time for a bite but not dinner, and the bartender recommended the mushroom salad.


Marinated Wild Mushroom Salad with bitter greens and quail egg (the egg was soft-poached and is sitting up top)

It was delicious, very meaty/earthy/sweet all at the same time. I think it was about $8-9 or so.

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Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon? Ham? Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

Well, I made a conscious decision to try more GNR's in 2010.

So far I've been to Avec, Brown Sack, Delightful Pastries, Kuma's Corner, Old Fashioned Donuts, Spacca Napoli, Sweets & Savories, and "Little Three Happiness. Additionally, I've been to inaugural GNR Resource Winners J.P. Graziano's, Pastoral, and The Spice House.

That's just scratching the surface of GNR's.

Today's Groupon is for GNR Volo. $20 for $40 worth of food and drink.

Happy Friday!

_________________
Ava-"If you get down and out, just get in the kitchen and bake a cake."- Jean Strickland

Horto In Urbs- Falling in love with Urban Vegetable Gardening

The husband and I had dinner here last night. I thought that Volo provided a good meal at a fair price. I may stop back if I am in the neighborhood, but I wouldn't go out of my way.

We had:

bone marrow which was two large pcs of bone with velvety, rich, meat jello (the good kind). The toasts that it came with were good, I wish there were a few more. The bones were not narrow so, extracting the marrow was simple with the use of a small baby-sized spoon.

stake tartare a healthy size, and I liked spicy, zingy kick.

pea flatbreat which was okay. I like peas a lot, but this was just okay.

duck confit which was nice and moist.

pork belly which was also okay, but tasted just like a big bc of ham off of the bone. It was missing something. A maple dressing? Mustard?

Went to VOLO last night with a group of friends. Since it was a bit of a celebration, we started with a bottle of prosecco. The server, who was excellent save for one thing, asked if he could just pour all the glasses, which was fine with us. That led to my one service quibble for the night: he never let us taste the later wines when he opened them. That didn't bother me for the bubbly, but we would have liked to taste the other bottles to make sure they were okay.

For food, the table shared the two flatbreads (Berkshire bacon/mushroom/goat cheese and potato/pesto/cheese I can't remember), curried pumpkin fritters, shrimp/octopus ceviche, rare sliced beef, and the roasted beets. The beets and fritters were outstanding. I liked the potato/pesto flatbread better than the bacon one. The ceviche and beef were less successful for our group. For dessert, we shared 2 chocolate plates (one was comped by the house) and the chocolate panna cotta. I enjoyed the caramel bar from the chocolate plate.

I don't get to VOLO often. I have enjoyed the few times I've been, but always come out with some sticker shock. I end up at Avec or In Fine Spirits more and feel more satisfied. If I'm in the area, VOLO is a decent option.

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-Mary

We had a rather unfortunate dinner a few nights ago @ Volo, largely due to service issues:

We started with Chilled Tuna which was beautifully charred, wonderfully fresh and light, no complaints.

Next up was Tuscan White Bean Soup and here is where the problems started. The soup was originally delivered when we were less than half way through the tuna. I asked the server to take it back to the kitchen and serve it when we had finished our first course. We then asked the server to provide us with separate bowls if possible, as we didn't both want to slurp from the same tureen. She said that their dishes are meant to be shared, so they don't usually provide individual plates (why, then did we each get a plate for the bread service that we were then able to use for the tuna?). She recovered nicely and found us a couple of cute square 'bowls' which we were happy to use (I mentally increased her tip). The soup was described as having "truffled bruniose vegetables". I could detect no truffle flavor, though there wasan overabundance of pepper.

After a bit of a wait this was followed by Duck Confit and again problems ensued. We asked for clean plates. Out of respect for the kitchen and the food I didn't think it appropriate to pile the duck on top of the remainders of the salsa verde served with the tuna. The duck itself was excellent. Unfortunately the French lentils & haricots vert were hidden under a great mass of baby greens. Nonetheless, a very nice dish, marred only by the fact that five minutes or so before we had finished with it...

our server did a quick hit and run--our Veal Sweetbreads were plopped, quite unceremoniously, on the table. When we had finished with the duck I piled our silverware on top of the dirty plates and caught the busboy's eye to signal that he could clear. When we got our clean plates we enjoyed the sweetbreads until my wife had to refrain from eating the bits that were still raw.

After fifteen minutes of so we were able to catch the bus boy as he was clearing the next table over and ask him to tell the server we were ready for the check. Fifteen or so minutes later she dropped the check. We noticed that it was the wrong check--she had brought us the bill for the next table over. We manage to attract the attention of the owner (?)/ manager and pointed out the problem to her. Fifteen minutes or so later the server literally threw the correct check on the table, mumbled an apology and quickly made herself scarce. After waiting another ten minutes for the server to pick up the credit card we paid with cash, leaving a tip of just over two dollars.

As I said, I thought the food was pretty good for the most part (the duck was also quite peppery, but in a good way). Perhaps I don't understand Volo's 'concept' of sharing and not offering clean plates, but it seems the server suffered a complete meltdown halfway through our meal.

I can't even wrap my head around the soup service. How in the name of Miss Manners are two people supposed to eat soup from the same vessel? And the server gave you sass about waning separate bowls??

Craziest damn thing I have ever heard with respect to restaurant service. It really falls at the feet of Volo's management, who have completely dropped the ball with both 1) the supposed concept of service, and with 2) the basic training that every server should have.

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Food & Flowers: Andre Jordan's sweet doodle for a cold winter's day; diary of an unhappy restaurateur, circa 1881; winter project - try a terrarium