The Kitchen Table

Don’t go here. Everything is terrible: the service, the atmosphere, and certainly the food.
Food-​wise: Stale bread, chintzy portions, poor presentation. Nearly everything was flavorless, and the «local» element to the food was vague at best.
Service-​wise: Employees go for smoke breaks out front, which means the entire entryway smells like smoke; service was confused, slow, and inconsiderate (and I hate to pull the «I work in the service industry» card, but I’ve just gotta. It was comically bad.)
Otherwise: Dirty, nightclub-​scented bathroom. Odd choice in music. And perfumed candles on the tables?!

We went for New Haven Restaurant week, I was super excited to go here because it seemed like a real farm to table restaurant and like it would have some really amazing quality food and cooking. It was sort of weird when we realized it was connected to Gothem the club — it just seemed, odd.
They seem like they have pre-​fix meals at this place often, so I expected restaurant week to be pretty much second nature to them. The atmosphere and the restaurant is gorgeous, small, and very hip, and the service was fine, but the food was just. .. bad. I got the beet salad which was fine, the beets were okay, but they weren’t warm or cold, and the lettuce seemed old and wilted. My partner got the risotto balls which I thought were terrible — the risotto was just flavorless and undercooked, with only a chunk of unmelted cheese inside. I really wasn’t disappointed until we got our entrees though, I got the only vegetarian option — the asparagus risotto — and it was truly awful. It seemed like they just used cream and some cheese to flavor the risotto, which was cooked okay but was completely flavorless, and very much lacking in the vegetables I was hoping for. It was just a giant plate of cheap rice — what are we paying for? The dessert was nothing to write home about — seemed like something out of a box from costco or another big box store. Nothing impressive. Definitely not going back again.
I think there are other great restaurants in New Haven with much better service and food quality, for the same price — such as Heirloom and Zinc.

Where do I start??? Well, my wife entered the restaurant and waited at the hostess station for well over 5 minutes before any employee was seen. That should have been our first cue to leave but we ignored our intuitions. Finally a young man showed up wearing timberland work boots, jeans and a dress shirt and asked us if we had reservations. I’m still not sure why that mattered as there was only one other couple in the entire restaurant.
The waiter came over (who was also the hostess) and took our order. My wife and I like to share so we orders a few different things. To start… spiced pumpkin soup, sesame shrimp and a caramelized onion and prosciutto pizza. The waiter informed us that they only receive their fish order on Saturday so they were out. We changed our order to muscles because he said they were delicious. The waiter brings the soup and pizza, both tasty. He then brings the muscles and you could smell the fish stench before the bowl hit the table. Those were sent right back, NO Thanks!!!
The busboy (also the waiter and hostess) cleared our table and took our entrée order. We ordered the burger, med rare.
The burger came out and it was WELL done– not good.
As we waited for our waiter/​hostess/​busboy to return with our check, we heard and felt this VERY loud bass. The restaurant is located (and shares a wall) with a popular nightclub. The whole place shook– crazy how they don’t see this as a problem.
Good luck with this place, truly unfortunate. the Kitchen Table is a Kitchen Nightmare and could use help from Fox /​Gordon Ramsey.
P. S. the waiter/​hostess/​busboy was also the Chef. I can’t be positive but pretty sure he was a one man show.

Over time this restaurant has been getting worse and worse. I used to describe this place as a hidden gem — there is never more than one other table of patrons, but the food was great.
Now, this place has gone significantly downhill. The last 3 times I have been there the wait for the food has been ridiculously long. The servers are rarely around. Last Friday I shared an overcooked burger (which i ordered rare) on a burned bun with rock hard bacon, a flavorless caesar salad, and extremely limp sweet potato fries. While we were finishing our wine, the server started to clear away everything from the table. When he took our water glasses out from under us while we were still drinking, one of the friends I was with asked if he needed to take everything. he responded with a sneer and a stank eye and informed us that we were done.
Really unclear how this place stays open.

The décor is very nice, the food is simple but good. Service is good. I wouldn’t go here without a
certificate but with it the food is just really good value.

The food was pretty tasty, it was easy on Friday for dinner for two.
But the menu sure was pricey– is that what you pay for local food?
I had the lemon risotto with tasty scallops on the top,
but I only got 5 scallops for the price of $ 20+ a pop?
I’d come back to support this place, I like their local/​seasonal meals.
But remember, although the price is high, for the environment: it’s a deal!

I visited The Kitchen Table last night nervously after reading the reviews on here. I had a $ 50 gift certificate and seriously considered giving it away rather than take the chance of eating here. My friend and I decided after having a glass of wine that we would stay and eat. They offer a pre-​fixe dinner on Wednesdays for $ 24. It was a limited offering with only two offerings for each course (app, entrée, dessert) so we got one of each. The appetizers were a zucchini fritter of some sort and a tomato tart. The tart was dry, but the zucchini dish was really good. For dinner, I had lemon roasted chicken with vegetables and potatoes. The chicken was cooked to perfection and the potatoes were tasty. I didn’t eat any of the vegetables (trying to save room for dessert). My friend had the risotto with scallops. The scallops were not large (and I didn’t try them) but the risotto itself was really good. So far, I was pleasantly surprised. For dessert, we had crème brûlée (but they called it something else) and vanilla custard with fresh peaches. They were both fine — nothing out of this world, but not bad either.
As rings true through the other reviews, the service was great and the waiter very friendly. We were, however, one of two parties in the place. They also pour a solid glass of wine.
So, while I wouldn’t rush back here, I’ll definitely consider visiting on a night when their full menu is available.

I was curious to try this one, but left confused. The hostess was very nice and the waiter was perfectly friendly and accommodating. They were having a special for a three-​course meal, which we all thought looked good.
Our friend had the salad with fruit as an appetizer and it was good. We both ordered the stuffed risotto balls as ours. We were both disappointed and neither of us could finish them. They had very little cheese or taste, and the risotto was nearly raw.
We had two burgers and the free range chicken for the entrées. The burgers were cooked properly and had nice flavor, but they were small patties on massive, dry rolls. I had to cut around the roll and there was half a bun on the plate when I was done with the burger. The french fries were bland, and I want to wager that they were frozen and in a plastic bag at one point. The free range chicken was the best food of the night, but the vegetables were very firm and not seasoned very well.
I probably would have been friendly and given a three star if it weren’t for the dessert. Let’s start with the edible one. The crème brûlée wasn’t bad, but was very plain and tiny. I also found it incredibly odd that a ¼ inch of brulee was served in 3 inch tall custard dishes.
The disaster, which warranted a negative star level was the flourless chocolate cake, it was inedible. I’ve never been served a dessert this bad in any restaurant. It was sawdust dry, extremely bitter, and just awful.
All that being said, I’m going to try this one again and make an update. I hope we just caught them on an off night.

The décor in this place is awesome. I love the colors and fabrics… Well done. Dustin, our server, was great. He made the perfect vodka martini for me which is always greatly appreciated
Now, the food… It was just OK. As the other reviewers said, the bread was hard on the outside and raw on the inside. They should just get their bread from Venice bakery (nom nom)… And the butters were just weird. I had the caesar salad with polenta croutons and it was pretty good. I had to add a bit of salt but overall not bad. For dinner I had the skirt steak appetizer and a side of brussle sprouts. The skirt steak appetizer was spicy. I liked the chimmicurri sauce, although the crostinis it was served on was a bit too oily for me. The brussle sprouts were very good, but again, needed a bit of salt. My friend had the Mac and cheese and seemed to enjoy it.
A big drawback for me was that it smelled like an ashtray. I don’t know if they allow smoking at the bar after hours or what, but I’ll assume it was a one time thing since none of the other reviews mentioned that.
All in all, I probably wont return.

I ate here with four of my coworkers the other night and we all agreed the food was some of the worst we have ever had. I’ll start off by saying that we had wonderful service and that our waiter belongs at a real restaurant.
The meal started off with undercooked rolls that were impossibly hard on the outside and were basically just dough on the inside. There was some hope when we got the appetizers and all that was wrong was that they were on average way under-​seasoned, but those hopes were soon dashed by the main course.
The dinner was all around bad. Our dinnners are described next in hopes of preventing anyone from making the mistake of eating here. Scallops and risotto: better described as porridge. This was the best of the meals. Next was a pork rib covered in a sauce that was described as tangy, but turned out to be just sour (and tasted rotten). Another friend had cold, soggy fried cod. My last friend had half cooked ravioli where she had to carefully eat the cooked parts out as the rest was too hard to bite through.
Last is my dish. I had a burger. Everyone at the table agreed it was the worst of the meals. This confused me as messing up a burger is pretty difficult. They managed it by putting a layer of charcoal on everything, somehow procuring bacon that had the texture of jerky and no taste, and putting a swiss cheese on it that was so bad it was hard to swallow. The beef itself was also the driest and most flavorless (outside of the charcoal taste) piece of meat I had ever had. This was all served with bland separated mustard and sweet potato fries they seemed to forget to fry.
Please do yourself a favor and avoid this place. I’m not entirely convinced the chef has even tried what he’s serving.

Is this place run by a billionaire? It must be bleeding money. First of all, it’s only open Thursdays through Saturdays from five to ten. I mean, it’s a restaurant, not a farmer’s market, so it’s paying rent for oh, 168 hours a week, not fifteen. Second, when we went, my boyfriend and I were two of the only patrons at like seven o’clock. Let’s say they serve five unique patrons every hour, which might be generous — that’s seventy-​five patrons a week. The food isn’t insanely overpriced, and the ingredients seem to be chosen for quality, so I don’t understand how the place stays afloat. I’m not complaining here, just confused.
Kitchen Table also looks pretty incognito from outside. I’d walked by it several times before thinking to make a visit. The interior is pretty nice and spacious, with comfortable booth seating complete with throw cushions. The vibe is a little dim but not unwelcoming.
The service was pretty great, if on the slow side. Our waitress was very friendly and helpful and actually palpably eager to please. I could tell she wanted us to love the place. She asked us how we enjoyed each dish, asked for feedback on an appetizer no one had ordered before, and even offered to take our picture, more than once. She wasn’t annoying, though, and when she gave us a feedback card at the end of the meal, I actually filled the damn thing out.
As much as I wanted to be enchanted by this strange restaurant, I have to say that I’m on the fence with regards to the food. There were some great moments, but on the whole it was unimpressive.
The bread service was very nice, with bread that was probably made in-​house. We got a basket of good dense rolls with a blueberry and a cinnamon scone. The blueberry gluey and tasteless, but the cinnamon was very good with a streusel-​like outside. I suspect that the baker isn’t quite consistent. The bread basket came with a plate bearing adorable piped buttons of maple butter and sage garlic butter. The maple was sweet, brown, and nutty, and the sage garlic packed a nice amount of flavor. Overall, this was a thoughtful presentation that I don’t really count on when I take my bread.
For our starters, we tried the purple potato gnocchi and the black garlic with toast. The gnocchi had an interesting texture that was very dumpling-​like and rustic. The flavor was simple and the dish was well-​seasoned, with an herbed butter and garlic sauce, but it was served with some hard endive that looked pretty but was poorly cooked and didn’t work texturally at all. I liked the black garlic with toast much better. This was perhaps my favorite dish of the night. The toast was grilled and crunchy with plenty of black char. The garlic, served as a whole head with the top chopped off for easy access to the cloves, was delicious. It was sweet but still sharp and full of character, and it tasted wonderful on the toast.
Our entrees were decent but pretty forgettable. I had the roasted quail stuffed with pomegranate and chestnut. The dish came with two cute little birds. The stuffing was really tasty, I have to say. The downside was that it was much more exciting than the actual meat. My boyfriend got the beer braised baby back ribs with tangy barbecue sauce, which were also reasonably good, though the sauce was on the sweet side. Both entrees came with well-​salted potatoes and asparagus coated in sage butter. This was some really good locally grown produce prepared in a comforting way.
Dessert was strictly mediocre, which is always sad for my greedy sweet tooth. We tried the flourless chocolate cake and the strawberry tiramisu. The chocolate cake was dense and kind of dry. It needed an adjustment in the batter, or at the very least, a scoop of ice cream on top. The strawberry tiramisu was just off. It had some kind of artificial flavor that I couldn’t pinpoint, but that I knew I didn’t want in my mouth.
Overall, the meal was pleasant, both in terms of food quality and dining experience. We ordered a Block 9 pinot noir off a wine list with several affordable bottles, and we were happy with our choice and had a long relaxing dinner. That said, the food, though well conceived, was not always well executed. I like the idea of Kitchen Table, its local focus and its sometimes imaginative menu. I get the sense, though, that the place has a lot of room for improvement. Maybe it is still working out some kinks. If it doesn’t close from lack of profit, maybe one day it will be a full-​fledged power restaurant.

Had walked by the Kitchen Table on a previous trip from NY to NH and was intrigued, so on this trip figured we’d stop in and check it out.
High scores for the ambiance — straight out of Anthropologie and very relaxed and homey feeling. Smells like the country as well, and the service was very friendly and helpful (even though it was her first night).
I love the concept of locally sourced food, but let’s not go overboard with the adjectives on the menu. «Authentic, Artisan, Sustainable Cattle». What cattle is inauthentic? Just tell me it’s grass-​fed or locally farm raised and I’ll be happy. And this particular cow obviously didn’t sustain her life. But I digress.
Food was decent — stand-​out items included a pizza with caramelized onions and thyme (yum), and the gnochi which was simple but light and fluffy as it should be. Also fiddleheads were nice.
Items that were lacking were the farmer’s salad (not interesting, one carrot, no garlic scapes as advertised, dressing way too thick), the spring veggie tempura (greasy, and the «aioli» was Hellman’s with lemon. Seriously.), and the rolls were not cooked (i.e. raw dough with a light crust). Also most of the food was not seasoned well — even the pizza dough could have used some salt!
Overall, a decent experience but the food could use some tweaking to make it a little more exciting.

My fiancé and I ate there last night, and had a wonderful meal. The bread came in 4 varieties, 2 rolls and 2 scones, w/​2 kinds of butter, herbed, and maple cinnamon, all very good. Then came the best salad I’ve ever had, the endive w/​blood oranges. Not at all what I expect a salad to look like, this plate was beautiful, and the taste combinations were just so good. For my entrée, I had the housemade ravioli w/​a very unique and delicious citrus cream sauce. My fiancé had the skirt steak, which was very flavorful, his only complaint was he would have liked more of the sauce. We ended our meal w/​the chef’s special chocolate creation, a dense, flourless wonder we both loved.
The service was good, our waitress was helpful, and funny. It was great to have a restaurant w/​such interesting selections not take itself too seriously. We definitely will be going there again soon!

We had a perfectly nice dinner at The Kitchen Table, but it’s obvious they’re new and still working out a few kinks.
The service was slow (but very friendly!). This didn’t really bother me, as I had a bottle of wine and a lovely and conversational date.
Our food was tasty, but the steak was a bit cold. They happily rewarmed it, but by then it was a bit more well done than desired. The crust on the chocolate tart was a little bit weird and dry, but the ganache inside was delicious (this dessert was extremely rich and is definitely good for sharing — we split it between 2 of us and still took home half). Besides that, we ate the caesar salad, the potato/​leek/​apple soup, and the chicken, all of which were delicious. We especially liked the seasonal vegetables on the side of the chicken and steak.
They do source ingredients locally, which I love. There was a long section in the back of the menu about local farms.
I was satisfied, overall. This food was like the kind of food you could imagine making at home for yourself but would never have time to do. It delicious but not pretentious. But since I’m newish to the area and there are many restaurants I have yet to try, I probably won’t be returning right away.

Sweet. This was the overarching theme of the meal. Sweet food (i.e. sugary), and sweet service, but nothing that was outstanding or noteworthy. Of the dishes that had a sweet flavor, nearly all were too sweet to truly enjoy.
We ordered a prix fixe menu of gorgonzola, mozarella, and arugula pizza, maitake mushroom cognac risotto, and pear crisp, as well as the spicy pumpkin soup, the fig and parmesan crostini, and the sweet potato gnocchi.
Let’s start with the good stuff: The pumpkin soup was great! So comforting and delicious. There was a strong curry flavor, and it warmed my insides.
The pizza was also good, and the portion was much larger than expected. It could easily feed a person as a meal, or be split as an appetizer amongst four people. There was a strong cheese flavor, and I liked the fresh arugula on top. Perhaps if there were caramelized onions on the pizza, it would’ve been even better.
The risotto was interesting, but it was hard to eat very much of it. I would not have wanted it as an entrée all to myself. The texture was interesting – not your typical super-​creamy risotto – and the flavor was good, but incredibly sweet at first taste. I don’t think I’ve ever had maitake mushrooms before, and while they worked with the risotto, I wonder if there could’ve been a different accompaniment. They were also quite large and I was a bit unsure of how to eat them.
The sweet potato gnocchi was decent, but again overly sweet. When it first came out, the smell was heavenly, but the taste was all same-​same sweet. It could have benefitted from a healthy dose of salt, or maybe even some spiciness to provide a counterpoint to the sweet.
And now, the bad. The crostini was not good. Far too much fig jam that was far too sweet. I couldn’t taste anything except for the jam. The bread was too plain and cut too thick. With maybe a quarter of the amount of jam provided, some olive oil, salt, and pepper on the bread beforehand, and more parmesan, this could’ve been good.
Finally, the pear crisp was downright puzzling. The crisp on top just didn’t work with the pears. It was so grainy and crumbly and tasted more like peanuts than the promised almonds, and the flavor combination just left me confused. My friend and I didn’t even eat half of the dessert, and we really tried to like it.
My friend and I were the only people in the restaurant for most of the meal, which meant that we had the opportunity to chat extensively with our waitress and the chef. Both were very nice and genuinely interested in our feedback. I would go back just because of how accommodating they were and how eager they seemed to improve.
They’re only open on Fridays and Saturdays now, but they’ll probably try doing more nights in the future. No definite plans for lunch at the moment. And the menu changes with the seasons.
One last note: the bathroom doesn’t seem to lock. And there’s only one bathroom. And a man barged in while I was washing my hands. And then proceeded to puke in the toilet. It was an odd way to end the meal.