Rustik

PHOTO: JEREMY BOLEN

There was pizza on the table, and tomato soup with “grilled cheese sticks,” and what was essentially a bread basket, a plate with three sad, lonely triangles of pita-ish flat bread.

“How’s the soup?” I asked my companion.

“It tastes like marinara,” she said.

“And how do you like the pizza?”

“It needs the soup.”

And so our dinner went. Course after course, we grappled with our food, trying to find nice things to say about it. The grilled cheese sticks tasted as if they had been grilled hours earlier, yet we complimented the cheddar that rested, now solidified, between the bread. And though the pizza (onions, capers and tomato) was pale and doughy, we conceded that the capers did offset the onions nicely. Above us hung an antler chandelier, a key component in the modern, nature-inspired decor. So we focused on that, eager to grab on to something we could love about the place.

But our efforts were in vain. There was nothing to love about the stuffed meatloaf, which arrived as dry as stale bread, or the mushroom lasagna, which was dead on arrival, having drowned in a pool of bland béchamel.

In fact, it wasn’t until we tried the butter cake, with its crisp top shell of sugar and sweet layer of custard, that we found something to truly enjoy. But even though that dish fulfilled Rustik’s promise of “modern comfort food,” it was too late. We were already so disappointed, and it would take more than cake to get the taste of this meal out of our mouths.