Expert Fare by Eric Ripert...

10 Arts by Eric Ripert

10 Avenue of the Arts

Philadelphia, PA 19102

www.10arts.com/ 

For my birthday, my mom had tried to find me a gift card to go out to eat at 10 Arts by Eric Ripert in Philly, but she couldn’t figure out how to do it, so she wound up just giving me some money to take my girlfriend out for an evening on her. We decided to go one Friday night, and we were both very excited to try it because of our love for French food. While 10 Arts is not technically a French restaurant, it is an American restaurant with heavy French influence and technique. 

The moment you walk into the Ritz Carlton, you can tell you are in for a treat. The lounge is in the lobby of the hotel, and it has high ceilings and a very modern look to it. We checked in with the hostess, and although we were a little early, she sat us right away. Once we took a look over the menu, we realized that the cocktails which looked awesome were extremely expensive, and in an effort to not go broke, we decided just to order beers instead. I don’t think there was any need to have 15 dollar cocktails on the menu in a place like that, but I guess it's Center City after all. The menu looked phenomenal, but we were once again limited by the fact that it was a Friday during Lent, so we could only eat fish. We decided to split an order of the baked oysters with parmesan bread crumbs and then we ordered the pan seared trout with Brussels sprouts and potato crisps and the poached salmon with lima beans and smoked roe for our entrees.

The baked oysters came out first, and they were quite beautiful in presentation. They were nestled in a bed of salt, and the bread crumbs and cheese melded perfectly with the oysters in their shells. We ate them up without a second wasted because they were absolutely delicious.

Our main courses blew away our appetizer. My trout was absolutely fantastic. The fish was cooked perfectly, and it had a nice crunch on one side because of the sear that it had received in the pan. The Brussel sprouts were bitter in a good way and they had so much depth of flavor to them. They contrasted to the flavor and texture of the trout perfectly. I could have eaten platefuls of the sprouts alone. I also had the pleasure of trying my girlfriend’s salmon and I was thoroughly impressed. I had never had anything that had sous vide before, and after tasting it, I have to say I now have a higher appreciation for food cooked with that method. It was beyond tender, and absolutely cooked perfectly the entire way through. Unfortunately for us, the service did not quite match up to the food in terms of quality.  

Right off the bat we knew we had a terrible waiter. To both of us it seemed like the same old story. The waiter saw us, realized we were young, and decided not to pay us too much attention because we couldn’t possibly be good tippers. I hate this mentality, especially because when a waiter or waitress assumes such a thing, it almost always seals their fate in the matter because they neglect the customers, which makes them not want to tip well. My philosophy about tipping is this: if you show up, check in once or twice and don’t mess anything up, I will give you 20%. If you do a good job I will give you more, but I won’t usually give less than 20%. However, if the service is complete crap I will give less. Unfortunately for this guy, he neglected us, so he didn’t get what he could have if he had simply paid a touch more attention to us. We sat for over a half an hour after we finished our main course and they had taken the plates away, just waiting for him to come ask if we wanted anything else. I really was appalled by how bad this guy was.

I would go back to 10 Arts in a heart beat, simply based on the quality of the food. The service was abysmal, but I would definitely give it another try. I think you should too because I am sure that I just had a bad waiter on a bad night and that it would not be like that on a different night. Cheers!