M.Wells

Summary

This place is across the street from Food Cellar. It’s nestled in a garage and used to serve a lot of steak dishes. The menu has changed into a more casual patio like experience (I am guessing just for the summer). When we arrived, there was no table service. Instead you have to go to the counter and place your order there. The menus are shown via QRCode. After you place your order, you carry the utensils, dishes, and drinks back to your table. The waiter will serve the dishes, so you don’t have to go pick up that. When you order, you (can) leave with them your credit card to open a tab. When you check out, they will tell you that gratuity is already included.

We started with Italian sodas, a pomegranate and cola flavored. Both were good. Like Aurora, it was a nice summer fizzy drink.

The poutine came with french fries, gravy, and cheese curds. This was pretty good and paired well with our soda. You can’t really go wrong with poutine. The fries were a nice crispy thickness and the sauce was not too salty.

The buttermilk fried chicken came with 3 pieces of crispy chicken served with buttermilk bleu cheese slaw and collard greens. The one thing that was lacking in this dish was salt. The batter itself didn’t have much salt in it, though it was crispy. The seasoning was a little different than expected, but it wasn’t bad nor good. It was odd that they served the drumstick with the foot in tact. The bleu cheese coleslaw tasted a bit strange in that the flavors clashed with each other in a bad way. The collard greens were probably the only thing in this dish that tasted like what you’d expect. It’s similar to BBQ collard greens. One call out here is that some pieces of the chicken were slightly undercooked. Overall, this dish was just OK at best.

The country pork chop and peaches came with a Heritage country pork chop and was served with peaches, confit onion, and garlic. The pork itself was very fatty and came in a slop of sauce from the peaches. Some parts of the pork appeared raw, so I didn’t want to take that chance. The parts I did eat were tender and had flavor, though the sauce kind of drowned the entire chop. The sauce was too acidic and sweet for me, and this may partly be due to the peaches. The peaches were soft but came out more tart than sweet. Overall, I don’t think I really enjoyed this dish and probably would’ve ordered something else had I known that this dish was going to have a single flavor profile.

I think the ambiance was pretty calm and serene unlike the Manhattan bustle. They don’t have fans here, so a hot humid day would pretty much make this into an oven. Nevertheless, this would definitely be a decent bar place just for the vibe and how close it is to the up and coming areas of Long Island City.

Final Verdict

The food here had been mostly a miss, but if you crave a poutine this would be a decent place to get some.

Yelp Jabs

No Caesar salad anymore. People are wearing the covid situation like an armor. You can order the dressing but they won’t make the salad. Horrible.

Doesn’t the dressing pretty much make a caesar salad?

Always had a very good meal here pre covid -19. Picked up their lobster roll recently and it was the saddest I have ever seen. Here it is next to a normal sized dinner fork. You tell me if this is worth 26 dollars? It came with over fried/over cooked potato chips. I wouldn’t order this ever again. Sad

This would probably be the last place I’d order a lobster roll from, let alone for $26. I don’t think I’ve had a lobster roll in New York City that was $26 good ever. I can’t imagine this place being the first.