1/5/2018 Agra Culture Visit #2 (and last)

The elusive hummus......

Financial advisors always suggest cutting back on those $6 daily coffees.  Our suggestion on saving money while eating out is to avoid Agra Culture.

This was our second visit.  The first was about two years ago at the 50th & France location.  We'd just attended a book signing by a friend of ours, saw Agra Culture and stopped in to see if it lived up to the hype, hoping to finish off the evening with a healthy meal.  During that visit we were struck with the lack of contents and very timid seasoning. We ordered a sandwich featuring harissa.  There was a fingernail size smear with no flavor. The staff confirmed its lack of flavor when questioned...and went so far as to say that they had told 'ownership' that this stuff was flavorless.

This visit was to the Highland Park location on Cleveland, just north of Ford Parkway.  Walking in at about 8:30 we were struck with the very contemporary build-out and the lack of customers.  Of course it was -5F and somewhat late.  We thought that might explain the abundance of empty seats.

The menu is large and somewhat complicated to read.  It's one of those order at the counter places and people who came after us appeared as we did, to spend at least five minutes staring at the menu.  It has sandwiches, breakfasts, bowls, flatbreads, sides, etc., with the same items appearing to be in  many categories. 

We ordered the SxSW salad (that's south by southwest, obtusely in reference to the Austin, TX festival) and the roasted vegetable sandwich.

The $9 roasted  vegetable sandwich should contain roasted zucchini and squash, organic bell peppers and red onion, organic spinach, hummus and feta on a crusty French roll.  That sounded good, emphasis on 'sounded.'  

For us, major criteria on vegetable offerings are: quality, quantity and presentation.   The quantity was skimpy, light to the point that we were not sure there was any feta (wefound one small piece), three small slices of zucchini and squash (combined, not each) and a wee bit of spinach.  We both searched for the hummus and concluded 'uh, perhaps a micro-dash on one place on the bread.'  (quite similar to the 'harissa smear' from 2 years ago---so clearly a formula to give you almost nothing).  And it's hard to figure out with so little volume of ingredients, the onion piece was hanging out of the bread.

 

Many salad options, several sounded good but we were drawn to the $11.50 SxSW salad thinking of a nice music festival and sitting outside in Texas, not hunkered down in this over-designed, big money restaurant.  The current restaurant mode seems to be overbuilt, black and white (Agra Culture, Zupas, Piada, on and on--did they all use the same design firm???)  where diners are on their own for ordering and thereafter.  Don't expect the front of the house staff to follow-up.  After the delivery person dumped our order on the sleek table, we never heard or saw another staff member.  No 'thanks' upon leaving, later, either.  Five or six staff people were standing around not doing much.  It was an "I could care less" attitude...but clearly they weren't paid for an extra minute because they were covering the food with giant long sheets of plastic wrap and grabbing the vacuum well before closing.


Looking forward to organic romaine & kale, sauteed chicken, basil, red onion, organic tomato, roasted potato, organic celery, blue cheese, crispy tortilla chips and southwestern ranch dressing. 

Wow...what happened?

The sauteed chicken was a thick version of the 'chicken jerky' you find at Noodles and Company--hard as a rock on the outside---this was a thicker, so you could actually find some edible chicken in the middle.  It took some searching to find the organic tomatoes because they were actually three halves of unripe cherry tomatoes.  We grow heirloom fingerling potatoes...delicious and creamy.  This salad had 3 small fingerlings cut in half.  After I ate one bite I offered one to my 'date', who, had she not already been committed, would have dumped me on the spot.  Those potatoes were cooked sometime in the distant past, were dried and cracking, having spent far too much time on the prep table, with the flavor of the inside of a refrigerator.  We don't eat food that should have been thrown out.  The tiny blue cheese offering probably tasted ok, once we found it (the bite was miniscule).  There were three fine half slices of red onion.  Overall it was a lot of slimy, wet romaine and kale,  covered entirely by some tortilla strips.   (Note:  when the place covers your salad with tortilla strips it's because they DON'T want to pay for any ingredients---it's your clue to write them off your list of dining choices).

On our previous visit to the 50th & France location, we talked at length to our server.  He told us that the whole staff had remarked on the flavorlessness of the harissa.  When we entered this location, I asked the person at the counter the level of heat in the harissa.  She immediately shook her head from side to side saying, "oh, it's not hot at all."   That was  my clue that it was the same flavorless smear - and perhaps a clue that ownership doesn't listen to front-line staff who actually might speak to the customers (or maybe that's why staff didn't speak to customers at this location----they've removed that pesky problem).

Our summary from 2 visits to Agra Culture at 2 locations:  they may use good ingredients...it's hard to tell because there are SO FEW of them to taste.   Good ingredients, when mishandled, are awful.   

We left much of our food on the table.  We'd like to think it serves the compost pile better than it served us.