Fulfilling A Promise To Return To Virtues

The last time I visited Virtues Restaurant located in the Ann and David Brennan Critical Care building at Summa Akron City Hospital, my experience wasn't just a little off, it was outright bad. Between poor back of house execution of the food and ill-timed food running by front of house staff, I could only come to one of two conclusions. Either the restaurant was having a really (and I mean really) bad day or it was in the throes of extinction, mere days from shuttering the windows and closing the proverbial front door. As I stated at the end of my prior review, I made a promise to return for another anonymous meal. I kept that promise when I returned exactly two months later on a Monday evening with no reservation.

My last visit had been on a Wednesday evening and I had found the restaurant strangely empty save for three or four tables of people. While tonight's crowd mirrored that first visit, it didn't particularly surprise me because Monday's are often a restaurant's slowest day. After checking out the menu posted on the outside of the restaurant, I approached the hostess stand and was quickly shown to a table with a partial view of the open kitchen. While I didn't see Chef Zifer running the line, he was definitely in the restaurant as he made several appearances to check on the food coming out of the kitchen.

Since I have already posted the regular menu from Virtues, I only needed to snap a photograph of the weekly specials:


While there were several items that caught my eye from the weekly specials, I still wanted to re-explore the rest of the menu, too. The thought occurred to me that I should re-order the same meal I had eaten before in order to see if it had improved. While the Thai BBQ salad and the Pan Roasted Bell and Evans chicken over tagliatelle were actually still available, the seared scallops over butternut squash risotto had been a weekly special during my prior visit and was no longer available. Instead I decided to stay within a similar theme as last time and order a multi-course meal to test the mettle of the hopefully re-tuned restaurant staff.

Based on feedback I had received from my previous review, a number of readers had suggested that I needed to try the signature roasted eggplant soup. In a fortuitous turn of fortune, each entree came with either a cup of soup or a house salad. While I would have gladly paid the $3 for a cup of soup all on its own, I was happy to save a little bit of cash and still get to try the soup.

After placing my order, my server verified the order in which I wanted the courses to arrive at my table, walked away to put the order into the system, and soon returned with something that was woefully missing during my first visit, warmed rolls and butter:


The basket contained a whole wheat roll and a white roll, both of which tasted good and were fresh.

Along with my rolls, my server also brought my cup of Roasted Eggplant Soup:


This was adorned with a few pieces of roasted peppers and eggplant and a drizzle of oil. I tasted the soup by itself and was happy to discover a well balanced dish. The sweetness from the roasted eggplant played well off the salt in the soup and the background had a nice hint of garlic and herbs. When I mixed in some of the roasted vegetables on top of the soup, I got an even bigger hit of vegetal sweetness. I can see why others have recommended this soup so highly as it was pretty darn tasty. In fact, I skipped the Saltines supplied with my cup and went straight for the dinner rolls to sop up the remnants in the bottom of my cup.

For my salad course, I decided to go with a half order of the Roasted Tomato and Mozzarella Napolean:


From this angle, you have the Napolean in the front of the shot, a red onion marmalade next to that, and a slightly dressed salad at the opposite end. Here was the same salad, but from the opposite perspective:


As with the soup, this salad was all about balance. While I expected the red onion marmalade to add sweetness, what surprised me was the addition of maple syrup in the balsamic dressing. The salad had been ever so lightly topped with the dressing and I think had the salad been fully dressed, it would've been too sweet. The salad artfully sat in a Parmesan frico "bowl," which while a little difficult to cut, added a nice salty, umami flavor to the rest of the dish. I was a little concerned about getting a good tomato at this time of year, but roasting them had the effect of concentrating the flavors. I was actually a little surprised at how large this salad was for $5 (remember, I got the half portion). I cleaned my plate and had I not had an entree coming, would've gladly polished off another plate of this.

Wanting to give the Bell and Evans organic chicken another chance, instead of ordering it over the tagliatelle, I decided to instead go with it accompanying a barley risotto:


Here was the same dish, but from a different angle:


In place of the several strips of unseasoned tenders that plagued its previous incarnation, this time the plate came out with an airline cut consisting of the breast and drumette. The breast had been sliced into thirds and a mushroom and roasted red pepper beurre blanc had been drizzled on top of the chicken. A timbale of barley risotto had been unmolded onto the plate next to the chicken and artfully adorned with several strips of roasted red peppers. The final element on the plate, organic spinach, had been combined with fresh chevre, shallots, and pine nuts.

The chicken was nearly flawlessly executed. It was seasoned properly and cooked until it was safe to serve, but still juicy and tender. The only complaint I had with the chicken was that the skin was a little on the flabby side. The beurre blanc added a wonderful richness to the chicken and the acidity from the sun-dried tomato helped to cut through the fattiness of the sauce. The barley risotto had been finished with cheese, presumably Parmesan, and had a nice saltiness to it without being overpowering. The barley had been cooked so that it was slightly chewy without being mushy. The one weak point I had with this plate was the spinach. While the goat cheese and pine nuts were a nice addition, in the end the spinach had been oversalted. I took several bites of the spinach from different spots on the plate just to make sure I hadn't accidentally hit a lone salty spot with my first bite. I finally came to the conclusion that yes, it was definitely too salty.

When my server came over to clear my plate, he listed the possible desserts tonight, but I was so full that I simply asked for the check. As opposed to my previous visit, this time the check only came to $27 with tax. This was primarily due to the fact that my soup was included in the cost of my entree and I had subbed the soup for the much more expensive butternut squash risotto I had ordered last time. I also mentioned during my last meal at Virtues that I felt the amount of food I had received during my entree didn't feel like it lived up to its price tag. This time around, I had no problem with that particular issue and felt that for $27, I had received both good food and good value.

After paying my check, I asked my server if the chef was available for a few minutes. He indicated that he would check and just a few moments later, Chef Zifer came out to my table. I stood, introduced myself, and invited him to join me at my table, which he graciously did. I more or less gave him the same rundown of my experience tonight as I gave here to you, gentle reader, and he was very happy that my experience this time around at Virtues was much better than my last. He also apologized for my previous meal, which I neither required nor expected, but was still happy that he did so. He also offered to comp my entire meal tonight, but knowing that I wanted to be able to write about my experience tonight without any encumbrances, I politely turned his offer down.

We chatted for about ten minutes and he gave me a little background on both himself and the restaurant and it was then that I discovered that the restaurant's busy time was during the day, not the evening. While the daytime saw anywhere from 200 to 250 covers, during the evening the number was closer to 70 to 100. Chef Zifer invited me back for lunch in order to experience the restaurant running at full production and I intend to take him up on his offer.

While I am happy to see that it appears my first visit did turn out to be the restaurant having a bad day, it just goes to underscore the fact that even when a restaurant normally operates as a well-oiled machine, the randomness of life can occasionally through a wrench in the entire affair and bring the delicate structure crashing down. While I imagine that Chef Zifer took my previous critical review with a grain of salt (after all, it was just a single review), I also think he reaffirmed tonight that one can never sit still in the restaurant business. If you aren't looking for ways to continuously improve and innovate, life (and your customers) will simply pass you by.

Based on the strength of my meal tonight, I recommend that you stop in and give them a try. If Virtues hasn't solved its consistency issues, I am sure that will bear itself out in the comments.

A Surprising Lack Of Virtue At Virtues Restaurant

If negativity turns you off, gentle reader, you can stop reading right now. It has been my experience since I started reviewing restaurants on my blog that most of my experiences fall somewhere in the middle, with the restaurant doing some things right and some things wrong. It is the very rare occasion that a restaurant blows me away or severely disappoints me.

Tonight's visit to Virtues Restaurant was the result of fulfilling the idea that came to me during this year's Taste of Akron. Instead of trying to sample and write about two dozen different vendors, I had the idea to sample the cuisine of three or four restaurants at which I hadn't eaten or reviewed and then follow that up with a formal review of the restaurant experience itself. Having already done this for Bistro on Main and Piatto Novo, the final restaurant on the docket was Virtues.

Virtues was located in the Ann and David Brennan Critical Care building, itself located inside the much larger Summa Akron City Hospital complex. Technically, the address for the restaurant was 525 East Market Street, Akron, OH 44304 and they can be reached at 330-375-7444. They also have a website here (warning: Heavy Flash content with music). While there was a front entrance for the restaurant and their website indicated that valet parking was available, I choose instead to park in the garage off of Adams Street and navigate my way through the hospital to find the entrance to the restaurant. The parking garage did cost money ($3), but the restaurant validated my parking when I requested it at the end of my meal.

Here was a shot of the entrance to Virtues:


Once inside the main entrance, I was greeted by an open and expansive space with the kitchen in full view. Looking around, it appeared to be a rather slow Wednesday night with less than one quarter of the tables filled with guests. After the hostess sat me at my table, she handed me the menu and asked for my drink order. After she left to fill it, I surreptitiously snapped photographs of the menu:






While the first page of actual menu items appeared to change weekly (which I appreciated), the rest of the menu only somewhat resembled the menu posted on their website. I was happy to see that many of the menu items came in full and half sizes, not so much because I was concerned about cost, but as a food writer, I love being able to sample more items if the sizes of the dishes are smaller. A note on the menu: the red circles with the phrase "Just This" in them refer to healthier choices. I couldn't find a legend on the menu that explained this, but the hostess who had originally sat me explained that it was on the display outside the restaurant.

The first sign of a problem was the lone waiter who seemed to be running from table to table, never quite able to get everything accomplished he set out to do. In fact, after waiting about ten minutes without any acknowledgement from him that I was even sitting at the table, the hostess who seated me stopped back over and asked if I had been helped yet. After I indicated that I hadn't, she walked away and returned a few minutes later with an order pad in her hand and asked if I was ready to order. Seeing as this might be my only opportunity to order my dinner, I took advantage of the situation. I decided tonight to do a three course meal: a butternut squash risotto with seared scallops to start, a half order of the barbecued Thai chicken watermelon and goat cheese salad for my intermezzo, and finish up with a full order of the Bell and Evans organic chicken over hand cut tagliatelle.

I'm not sure that the hostess actually entered the order into the computer herself as she flagged down one of the other servers who happened to be working a small private party in the back of the restaurant. Realizing that there were actually two servers working the floor, it made even less sense why the first server I spotted was having such a problem keeping up with the tables in the front of the restaurant. I don't know if bread service was standard, but I do know that I saw baskets of bread on other tables and I never received one.

After about fifteen more minutes, a second woman who was neither the hostess nor a server started walking towards my table. Apparently my salad had arrived before my appetizer:


Expecting the first course to be the risotto, I was a little surprised to receive the salad first, but I thought I'd give the kitchen the benefit of the doubt and just roll with the punches. What the menu didn't say was that this was a Barbecue Thai chicken, watermelon, and goat cheese salad over spinach. Since I love raw spinach, this wasn't a big deal, but conceptually I had envisioned a different dish than what was put in front of me.

Let's talk about the positives first. The chicken was cooked all the way through. The spinach leaves had been dressed properly (not too much dressing) and weren't wilted. Now let's talk about the negatives. The dressed spinach lacked salt. The watermelon chunks still had seeds in them. The chicken was literally smothered in a thick sauce only vaguely tasting of peanuts and unlike any Thai flavors that I've ever come across. In fact, not only was it unlike any other Thai flavors I've had before, but it was simply bad. I don't know if the more-than-judicious use of the sauce on the chicken satay skewers amplified the effect, but I can tell you that this is a flavor I am not eager to try again.

Halfway through my salad, my risotto arrived in more ways than one:


A little annoyed that the kitchen couldn't stagger the courses better at this level of dining establishment, I was even more surprised that the dish that had been placed at the opposite side of the table gave off an ammoniated smell so strong that I sat straight up in my seat. My mind was suddenly flooded with memories of walking through standard supermarket grocery stores with fish counters where the fish wasn't exactly "fresh." The kind where there is almost an invisible fish-smell "shield" that keeps you from getting too close.

I finished up my salad and switched the position of the two plates, so I could better inspect the risotto. Visually, the dish looked nice. It had been garnished with two sprigs of fresh thyme, a nice touch indicating that the herb used in the actual risotto would also be thyme. The two generous scallops had been seared to a nice golden crust on the outside. I cut one of the scallops in half and took a picture of the interior:


While I usually prefer my scallops on the rare side, given the smell coming off of them, I was actually hoping that they were cooked a little more than rare. Had these been pristine scallops, I would've gladly gobbled these closer-to-raw-than-rare beauties down. Mustering up my courage, I took a bite. I was moderately happy to discover that the ammonia odor I had detected earlier was much more muted in flavor. That, however, was primarily due to the fact that the scallops had been so oversalted that no other flavor could co-exist. The delicate sweetness that fresh scallops were supposed to have was nowhere to be found. I gave up on the scallops and decided to focus on the risotto underneath the disappointing bivalves.

It was at this moment that the server who had been working the private party in the rear of the restaurant approached me with my main entrée, the pan roasted chicken over tagliatelle. Having taken only a single bite out of the risotto (and a not very pleasant one at that), I looked up at him and said, "Seriously?" It was at that moment I realized that not only were there serious problems in the kitchen, but also that no one seemed to be in charge of managing courses in the front of house either. He mentioned that he would have the kitchen hold the dish until I was ready. While I appreciated the gesture, I also realized that the likely success of holding a freshly cooked pasta dish under a heat lamp for another ten minutes was approximately zero to none.

I turned my attention back to the risotto. While the risotto definitely had a better flavor than the scallops adorning it, the butternut squash suffered from two flaws. First, the squash had been cut into a brunoise and the tiny cubes, while evenly cut, didn't lend much flavor to the risotto itself. Second, after gathering up four or five bits of butternut squash on my fork to see if I could get some actual butternut squash flavor, I discovered as I mashed the soft squares between my tongue and the roof of my mouth that they were actually gritty.

Still hungry, I left the other 1 1/2 scallops and finished the remainder of the risotto. Personally, I would have loved to seen the kitchen roast the butternut squash cubes, thus intensifying their flavor and adding a bit of crusty caramelized exterior to achieve some nice texture. After I finished with the risotto, I wanted to make sure that there was no mistaking that I was ready for my third course: I placed the plate on the place mat opposite mine. This apparently worked as I had hoped because only a few minutes later, my entrée arrived via the same server who had brought it previously.

Here was a shot of the Pan Roasted Bell and Evans Chicken over Tagliatelle:


As my server set this down in front of me, he helpfully added, "I had the kitchen re-fire the dish." While this pasta dish was available in both half and full sizes, I opted to go with the larger size figuring that I could take any leftovers home with me. One of my first thoughts was that it seemed like a rather small bowl of pasta and chicken for $17. Thinking that maybe the kitchen had made a half order instead of a full one, I asked my server. He confirmed that it was indeed the full size order.

When the server then asked if I would like freshly grated Parmesan cheese on top, I agreed. Pulling out a Zyliss-like rotary cheese grater, instead of grating the cheese on top of the pasta, he held it upside down, grated a copious amount of cheese, and then dumped the entire mass on top of my pasta. I'm not quite sure what the server was thinking as the end result was that I wasn't able to control how much cheese was added. It was either none or way too much. At this point in the meal, however, nothing seemed to surprise me any more.

Instead of cooking an entire chicken breast and then slicing the cooked protein and fanning it over top of the pasta, the kitchen had actually cooked up several smaller individual pieces of chicken. While the sear on the outside of the chicken was nice, that's where the pleasantries stopped. Not only was the chicken uniformly grossly underseasoned, but because of the thickness of the "tenders," it was wholly dried out as well. The rest of the ingredients in the bowl didn't fare much better. The spinach, tomatoes, and roasted red pepper strips were also underseasoned and the sauce pooled at the bottom of the bowl was thin and watery. While the sprig of fresh rosemary garnishing the top of the pasta added a nice herbaceous nose to the dish, it turned out that there wasn't any rosemary actually in the pasta.

The tagliatelle went from okay (a single strand from the top of the dish) to grossly overcooked (the pasta sitting in the watery sauce at the bottom of the dish) and falling apart. Sadly, there were more clumps of doughy pasta than not:


I ate as much of this as I could, but probably ended up leaving about a third of the clumped pasta behind. During none of the courses did anyone check to see how my meal was, but the hostess who seated me did stop by and refill my water glass once or twice. I asked two separate employees if the chef was working tonight and I never did receive a consistent answer. Based on the photo of Chef Frank Zifer on the Virtues website, I don't believe he was. Or if he was, he certainly wasn't running the pass. Whomever was in charge (and given the abject failure of both the front and back of house I'm not entirely sure someone was), did an awful job in terms of quality control and course timing.

Everything said and done, with tip and tax, my dinner tonight came to just slightly under $40. I can say without doubt that I've had better meals at one eighth this price. So many people right now are having to watch every penny they spend because of the continued downturn in the economy. While I am in a fortunate position that I can spend $40 on a single meal, I am seriously hesitant to return to this comedy of errors, much less recommend it. While many would be quick to write off my experience as the restaurant just having a bad night, I find that I cannot recommend a restaurant where so much seemed to be so wrong. The fact that I spent $40 for the privilege makes me feel like someone was rubbing salt in an open wound.

Chef Zifer, Virtues needs direction. I am certainly willing to do another review (anonymously, of course), but not before some quite serious issues are addressed.

[Ed. Note: I felt so underwhelmed by my experience at Virtues that I did something I rarely do: I contacted the General Manager, Dan Dewitt, and forwarded him a rough copy of this review before its publication today. He freely admitted that the night that I went and experienced my meal was a completely off night for the restaurant and understandably asked that I give the restaurant another chance before printing anything negative on my blog.

While I certainly am not egotistical enough to think that this blog entry will reach millions of readers out there on the Internet, I also realize that the words that I write have impact. At the same time, I feel duty-bound to my readers and to the several hundred other restaurants that I've reviewed that, good or bad, the review is an accurate reflection of the experience I had.

Based on the feedback I've had from other foodies familiar with the heights that Virtues has attained in the past, as well as the statement I made at the end of this review, I actually do intend to do a follow-up visit. Even though it's difficult to overlook first impressions, I will approach it with as much of the same critical eye and objectivity as I tried to do here.]

Join Me At The Taste of Akron 2010

Bare with me as I channel my inner Snoopy: It was to be a dark and stormy night.

Fortunately, the foreboding weather held off long enough during this year's Taste of Akron event in Hardesty Park near the intersection of Market and Hawkins that thousands of people were able to try out an array of foods from local restaurants and caterers. This being the fourth year of the Taste, it has steadily grown in both the number of vendors and attendees every year. While my normal method of documenting such an event would be to try out and photo-document something from each vendor, I knew that with two dozen different places to try and a limited amount of time, stomach space, and money, I needed a different strategy.

After parking my car on one of the surrounding streets, I walked up to the ticket booth to purchase my food tickets. Tickets were only $2 a piece, but I have come to learn that it is better to be cautious on how many you initially buy because they are not refundable. No money was actually exchanged with vendors for food, only tickets. Depending on the size or expense of the item, each dish at a restaurant was either one, two, or three tickets ($2, $4, or $6).

As I approached the entrance, I saw a list of the vendors inside:


As opposed to previous years, this year there was a spot for strollers to be left just outside the tent to help avoid the clogged lines of people. This was definitely a positive change from last year when during the busy time (and there really wasn't a non-busy time), you not only had to navigate through the crowds of people, but the double-wide strollers were a bit annoying, too. Knowing how hot it can feel in the tent, fans were placed strategically at both ends. This helped somewhat when you were at either end of the tent, but right in the middle, it was definitely still hot and muggy.

As I strolled around looking at each vendors' offerings, I decided to pick restaurants that I was interested in doing a formal review at some point in the future. I considered tonight sort of a "preview," if you will, of what to expect at an actual meal.

As such, I came up to Piatto Novo and decided that they would be my first stop tonight:


If you look closely at the menu offerings, you can see the start of a major trend in the food this year, sliders. Unfortunately, none of the "sliders" that I saw or ate were truly sliders as none of the buns were steamed. I know, picky picky, but at best, these were just small sandwiches on buns.

Regardless, I decided on going with the Italian Beef slider:


Sadly, there was no spicy giardiniera to put on top of the sliced meat, but out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a jar of Sriracha sauce. Score!

As I took a bite into my sandwich, I noticed how dry (not necessarily stale, just not moist) the bun tasted. In a true Italian Beef sandwich, the customer is given the option of having the sandwich dipped in the jus. While the lack of giardiniera was disappointing, a dipped sandwich would've gone a long way from taking a good sandwich and making it even better. That being said, the meat was nicely cooked and tender and was flavorful. With the addition of the Sriracha, it even had a little bit of the heat that I associate with a properly made Italian Beef sandwich.

My second stop tonight was to Bistro on Main. Technically from Kent and not Akron, I've been hearing some interesting feedback about this restaurant and intend to check them out soon.


While the green menu being handed out at the tent's entrance stated that the Bistro was serving up cheesecake, popcorn shrimp, and a short rib slider, in reality, they were serving a seared scallop with avocado and roasted corn orzo and a second dish, a baby blue salad. I decided to go with the seared scallop:


It is hard to hold seafood for any length of time, so I was a bit skeptical about how good this might actually be. When I got back to my seat, I cut open one of the scallops to reveal a nicely cooked exterior and translucent interior:


First, I tasted the avocado and roasted corn orzo. While the orzo was good, I didn't get a whole lot of flavor from the roasted corn. The scallop, which had been seasoned before being seared, had just the right amount of punch to make this a successful dish. And while some might argue that the scallop was the star of the dish and the orzo should play second fiddle, I felt like the orzo could've used a bit more personality. All in all, though, this was a nice dish.

My third stop tonight was at a rather unusual venue, Virtues Restaurant (warning: Flash content with sound). What makes Virtues unusual was that it was located inside Akron City Hospital. While it would make sense that visitors might want an upscale meal while visiting friends or relatives, it still felt a little strange to think about going to a hospital for dinner if you or someone you know wasn't sick.

Regardless, here was a shot of the items being offered at Virtues' stand tonight:


While the sea scallop sounded good, having just eaten a scallop at Bistro on Main and the fact that I only had two tickets left in my pocket made me choose the BBQ Bison slider. Here was a shot of the sandwich:


I tasted the bacon blue cheese slaw by itself and found it to be quite interesting. The smokiness from the bacon and the sharpness from the blue cheese were present, but not overpowering. I don't know that I'd be able to eat this as a standard side dish, but as a topping it worked quite well. I also tried a bit of the BBQ sauce. By itself, it had a decent flavor, but when combined with the coleslaw, it got lost. The worst part of this sandwich was the actual bison meatball. It was rather dry and uninspired. This slider was also the only item that I had tonight where I had to reassemble the sandwich so I could eat it. Whomever had assembled the sliders thought it would be artful to put the coleslaw behind the meatball instead of on top of it. It looked nice, but was definitely not mouth ready.

Having had my trio of savory, I decided to finish up tonight's tour with something sweet. When I saw that Vaccaro's Trattoria was sporting a hotel pan full of cannoli, I decided to stop and pick one up:


While the famous Godfather quote did flash through my mind, tonight I decided to leave the tickets and take a cannolo instead. Here was a shot of my dessert tonight:


Fried dough can get a little soft in humid weather like today, but Vaccaro's cannolo was shatteringly crisp and fresh. The filling, a slightly sweetened ricotta concoction with bits of chocolate was tasty and refreshing. It was sweet without being too sweet and the coldness of the cheese was a welcome relief on such a warm July day.

After finishing up my meal, I wandered over to a separate area where West Point Market was hosting another annual "The Finest Cut" steak cook-off. A friend and fellow food blogger at Dad Cooks Dinner, Mike Vrobel, had won last year and was entering his newest creation in this year's contest in hopes of walking away with another title.

Here was a shot of Mike presenting his finished steak to the judges (Lisa Abraham, food writer for the Akron Beacon Journal and tonight's MC was on the right):


This year he entered the contest with a grilled ribeye steak served with a chipotle lime butter. While there wasn't a general audience tasting (just the judges), Mike did have a few samples left over after he presented his steak to the judging panel and I have to say, it was perfectly cooked and seasoned. While he didn't present any of the reduced sauces and accoutrement that some of the other contestants had, he presented his steak as I would have preferred it, simple, seasoned nicely, and cooked to a wonderful medium rare.

I won't spoil it here, but Mike wrote up the results of the contest on his blog. Click on the link if you want to see what happened.

Having tried four different tastes at this year's Taste of Akron, I am very much looking forward to sampling some of the food at each of the respective restaurants sometime in the near future. While the Taste of Akron is finished for this year, I encourage you to check it out next year. The event is always on a Thursday, late in July, and really does showcase some of the best eateries that Akron and the surrounding communities have to offer. Make sure the Taste of Akron is on your list of events for next summer, you won't regret it.