Terrain Cafe — Local services in Palo Alto

Extremely disappointing. For a restaurant that was billed as 4.5 stars by Open Table and Google Maps, and one with pretensions to being "exceptional" with a $120/couple dinner (without alcohol) that featured artful description of dishes, Terrain really didn't measure. The cooking was OK, but the design of their dishes was... amateurish: every dish!

Roasted-apple, fennel & arugula salad: with a weird combo of too-crunchy all-arugula (I felt like a horse chomping) greens & tooth-sticking cubes of carmelized oat & seeds (what is that??), this salad fell very short. Odd extremes of bits of foods made the mouth-feel really strange, and ultimately unsatisfying. Roasted apple was the only saving grace, but not enough to save the dish.

Charcuterie: A big dish - definitely not an "appetizer" and priced accordingly at $22... very ordinary and uninteresting hard crostini. Cheese was good, pate was fine, but the salami was just weird.

Scallops: Wow $30 for 3 little scallops? They tasted very fishy, and there was sand in the scallops. I was prompted to ask whether the scallops were fresh or frozen. When told they were "fresh", I concluded these must have been held-over stock in a refrigerator. I know what FRESH scallops taste like, and they do not taste like ones I ate! Only thing good was the squash sauce. Again, really unsatisfying.

Striped Bass: Fish was at least fresh and appropriately prepared. Nothing particularly wrong with the dish but there was no flavor to the dish at all. Unmemorable.

I'd say the only that impressed was the fresh bread. But for the price and expectations set by the restaurant, this was...

I've dined here off and on since Terrain opened last year. Last November it was an ok experience. Things have improved greatly since then (new management, servers becoming more experienced, new chef) but my mall dining rules are basically in the off hours only so if I'm there on the weekend and it was brunch, it's a 10am sort of thing. If I'm there during the week, it's 11 or 2. I hate crowds and I hate waiting, so that's just how I roll. The only exception to this rule of mine is if I have made reservations.

I happened to be at the mall yesterday so I wanted to grab a light bite to eat. The salmon toast was excellent, and compared to the crab toast it has definitely gotten easier to eat in terms of the bread. This was easily bitten into, and I could also cut it with my butter knife.

The potted bread with cardamom butter is still delicious.

I had chamomile tea but the teapots are a little weird, definitely let it steep a long time before you pour. The mesh basket doesn't seem to go far enough into the teapot to really let everything mingle.

I'll be...

I've been to Terrain on few occasions at different days of the week and times of the day: beware they have a very limited menu in the mid afternoon, between lunch and dinner. The menu changes seasonally and I haven't come across a dish I don't like, but some are better prepared than others. The soups are creamy, love the kale Cesar salad and the Brussels sprouts, the scallops is a nice dish, but my zucchini were overcooked, while the 3 scallops in the dish were not evenly cooked, and IMO too much mayo was used for decorating. Teas are nice, mango Margarita is tasty, but barely felt the alcohol. I do enjoy the ambiance of the place with fresh flowers and plants, the bread served in a flower pot, but service is inconsistent, e.g. on Sunday evening, ~7 with almost empty room, our server checked on us just once, brought the bread after our food order and upon our request, then let us wait for the check on an empty table. Also pricey for the type of establishment the...