With a dining room made of glass walls and concrete, a wooden house whose yard is packed with logs for their wood-burning pizza oven and a reservation list filled by the city’s laid-back and well-dressed, Salt is the kind of restaurant that could feature in an episode of Sex and the City. The service is friendly; the music, though spiked with popsanova, is mostly house and 80s hits (yay!); and their pages-long menu, with French and Japanese classics as well as a selection of sushi, has some exciting offerings. Chief among these is their choice of pizzas, like the Italian sausage one (B250 for small) which has a light and crisp crust imbued with wonderful aromas of burning wood. The ribeye steak with wasabi (B300) pairs strips of juicy beef with a wasabi so fresh it has the consistency of guacamole, and the side of sauteed potatoes is garlicky, greasy (clarified butter, we think) and delicious. The spicy yakisoba with shrimp (B200) feels like cheating as it’s a pad kee mao with Japanese noodles, but it’s still so savory and spicy. We also think a few French chefs in town should come learn how to make frog legs from Salt’s young Thai chef—they’re that good. Other dishes are less inspiring. The goat cheese salad while generous with the goat cheese, has little else going on (and this could be said of many of their salads) and the vegetable tempura misses the mark with its greasy batter. Our other big gripe is that unless you’re seated in that desirable glass and concrete box, more than half the experience of being at Salt is missing. Recently, the overflow was seated in a separate, cramped room, the house’s basement, which either hasn’t yet been decorated, or will never be. They should value their own brand appeal and politely turn away the overflow instead of asking them to pay for an ambience that is decidedly not Salt. We’d also love it if they rewrote the menu—an oft-overlooked detail in a joyful dining experience—to make it more informative. Still, considering how solid the food is and how reasonably-priced, Salt is practically performing a (sexy) civic duty by making eating out such an occasion. Corkage B500.
