Like usual, I still add at least a day or two of buffer before and after travel days when I go to a different city, so when I went to Seattle for the Sea-Meow Convention, I had some extra days in town to spend together with friends. On one of the days, I got dinner with Dani at 2120, a New American restaurant in downtown next to Amazon’s Spheres.

(Note: The lighting in this restaurant was very dim, and these photos were taken with my phone, so they’re not quite up to the same level of quality as many of my other food pictures.)

As our first appetizer, we got steak tartare made from prime New York beef topped with shallot, extra virgin olive oil, parsley, egg yolk, and pickled mustard seed with a side of house-made potato chips.

Steak tartare is often served with bread, so it was interesting to see it served with potato chips here. I think chips would be fine if it accompanied beef that was particularly strong or gamey, as the fried flavor of the chips would pierce through the beefiness. However, this steak had a smooth and mild flavor—which, in itself, is good—but I think it would’ve worked much better with plain bread, as the potato chips ended up being a bit overwhelming for this. Adjacently, I think chips would work if the beef was bland, but this tartare was properly seasoned, so the chips just ended up adding a bit too much saltiness to the overall flavor profile.

For our beverages, we ordered two drinks from the zero-proof menu: Dani ordered a No Bucks Given made from cranberry compote, ginger syrup, and fresh lime juice mixed into a soda base; and I got a Pear Citrus Spritz made from pear compote and fresh lemon with a soda base.

My pear drink demonstrated a peculiar flavor profile phenomenon in which, if I drank a normal sip, it would just taste like I was drinking lemon juice with no pear, but if I took a tiny sip to the extent that it was only enough to just barely wet my tongue, I would be able to identify the pear flavor with almost no lemon.

Our next appetizer was a half dozen Washington oysters served on half-shells with a side of apple cider mignonette. These were solid oysters with a pure taste and refreshing texture.

As our side to along with our main entrées, Dani wanted to try the beet salad with roasted pear, pistachio, whipped chèvre, and cranberry vinaigrette.

It surprisingly wasn’t bad, but there’s only so much you can do with beets, so it wasn’t particularly delicious.

Our first main dish was grilled octopus with serrano and white bean purée, chili flakes, sautéed kale, chickpeas, and burnt orange gastrique.

This would have been my favorite dish of the restaurant if it wasn’t about four times saltier than it needed to be. I could tell that the octopus had a deep, rich flavor and the texture was incredibly soft and tender, but because it was egregiously oversalted, it bordered on being bitter.

Next was smoked salmon rillette with parsley, pickled red onion, fried caper, chive oil, lemon, and aioli with a side of crostini.

This was fine and was technically exactly what the menu said it was, but I guess I didn’t really quite properly grasp what rillette was, because it wasn’t what I was expecting. This dish sort of tasted like I just opened some really high-end canned salmon dip and ate it as a spread on bread.

The density of the crostini was a bit too low. … In simpler terms, there were too many holes in the bread. I would’ve appreciated it if the bread contained more bread.

For our carb dish, we ordered house-made oxtail pappardelle with rosemary, pecorino romano, heavy cream, lemon, and oxtail jus.

This pasta came out with way too much Parmesan cheese on it. I’m not a fan of cheese, especially the types that smell extra moldy like Parmesan does, so that single-handedly ruined the dish for me. I think it would’ve been a lot better if they added fresh Parmesan tableside, because then I would’ve been able to decline it. I couldn’t really tell how the pasta was because all I could taste was the cheese, so I wasn’t really able to objectively assess the dish.

Our final entrée of the night was seared scallops with pickled shimeji, celery root purée, Japanese eggplant, and chili oil.

Dani had a portion of this dish and brought the rest back home to give to her housemates, so I only sampled half a scallop. The portion I did have was great—the scallop was thick, tender, and rich with flavor. However, almost every other component of the dish was a bit too earthy to the point of being bitter.

For dessert, we ordered some Olympic Mountain pear-raspberry sorbet.

This was a refreshing conclusion to our meal. It had a good balance of pear and raspberry flavor, and it wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet. The portion size was also satisfyingly large, and was way more than you’d get at an ice cream shop for the price.

I took some photos of the restaurant. It looks empty because we were one of the first reservations of the day and I snapped these pictures on my way to the restroom right after we arrived, but by the time we were done dining, the restaurant was pretty full and bustling.

Steak tartare	$  19.00
Half dozen Washington oysters	$  24.00
Beet salad	$  16.00
Grilled octopus	$  23.00
Smoked salmon rillette	$  16.00
Oxtail pappardelle	$  34.00
Seared scallops	$  42.00
Olympic Mountain pear-raspberry sorbet	$   6.50
No Bucks Given & Pear Citrus Spritz	$  16.00
Sales tax	$  20.15
Gratuity	$  35.37
Total	$ 252.02

The table on the right shows how much we paid for our meal.

Although 2120 wasn’t a bad restaurant, I thought it was a little bit underwhelming across the board. They market themselves as fine dining, but I think they spent too much on the perception and presentation of the restaurant, and not enough on improving the dishes.

Usually, I’m able to get a general gist of the theme of what I enjoyed or what I think could be improved, but I couldn’t really come up with something like that for 2120. It seems like my likes and dislikes were quite scattered, with different kinds of compliments and critiques being applicable for different dishes (which explains why my dish-by-dish feedback above was fairly diverse).

I found the environment of the restaurant to be pleasant, and I had no complaints about the service. However, the only menu item I found to be worth the money was the sorbet, with everything else not quite meeting expectations at their respective pricepoints.

I guess it is possible that I was so unlucky that I somehow only picked their mediocre dishes and managed to avoid all their specialties or something, but based on my dining experience this day, I think there are a lot of other restaurants I would recommend before this one.