Homesick — Restaurant in Asbury Park

3 1/2 stars

My top-tier chum and I stopped here for lunch this past Wednesday on our way down the shore. Despite the fact that 4th of July weekend was kicking off (the Parkway was slowly but surely getting more and more crowded), Asbury was pretty empty. We had our pick of tables inside and out, and opted for sidewalk seating with (my personal preference always) primo canine chum viewing.

I'm not sure I've ever experienced this before in a restaurant, but the price points seemed extremely arbitrary, both for drinks and food. I can't imagine that a restaurant wouldn't put considerable time/thought into pricing their menu items, calculating time, cost, etc., and yet. As an example, my chum got a Salty Meg (vodka, grapefruit juice), which was $8. My drink, the Tutu, had an egg white, gin and lavender, was more than twice that at $17. Big jump (and to be fair, the egg white for sure adds some complexity to the process). Same with the food. My chum got the tuna tartare app, which was $22. I got the spaghetti with fried egg, which was a legit entree and almost half the cost at $14. Again, I'm sure there's a rationale for it but the optics were a little odd in our opinion - not necessarily a negative.

I liked the spaghetti/fried egg dish - the inclusion of the breadcrumbs and parmigiano gave it almost a high-end Italian breakfast sandwich vibe, which I was not upset about. The tomato conserva wasn't my vibe but it was easy to just scrape that to the side. The Tutu was also tasty; I love egg whites in cocktails, and the lavender complements them well. Smooth and floral. My chum was pretty underwhelmed by her cocktail, which wasn't mixed well but once she stirred it around a bit the taste improved - bit of an unforced error there though.

The service was perfectly fine. We were mostly already on vacation mode so we weren't exactly checking our watches (just nervously side-eying the GSP on Google Maps) but everything came out timely and our waitress stopped by regularly to check in.

As we were leaving, my chum commented, "This was fine." It was. It could have been better and I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend this place, but it was by no means a...

Ugh....I'm hesitant to write this but I feel I must in the hopes that the Smith group reads it. Let me also start by saying I really don't understand the other reviewers even mentioning or comparing Homesick to the prior establishment Brickwall. That would be like comparing Nettie's in Asbury to the Luigi's that was there before. Silly. I was excited to have dinner here (I've had lunch, which was good) as Homesick is part of the Smith group which owns Porta and Pascal and Sabine - two of my absolute favorite places in Asbury. Service was somewhat slow but being foodies (the group I ate with also) we understand the hiring environment is tough so we had no problem with the wait as we could see (or believe) they might be short staffed based on the number of tables our young server had. Food - We ventured and ordered the crispy chicken skin with creme fraiche Andrew caviar. PLEASE take this off the menu. It was horrific. A big skin, drenched in grease with maybe a dollop of creme on top and 6 caviar eggs (yes, I counted). We took one bite and left the rest. Our server too it off our bill which I am not a fan of, I mean I ordered it right? Not necessarily their fault we didn't like it. I assume someone out there likes it and the Smith group MUST have tried it and said it was good? Maybe? We ordered the strawberry salad, pedestrian at best. The steak was ordered, $52 14 ounce. Grizzle and fat everywhere. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm OK with that if it was $25, but not at $52. Side of carrots, excellent. Flounder, good, as was the Salmon, but pricey. Sooooo what next? I'm going back to give it another go with different dishes and hopefully up the stars, because I really want them to succeed, but to be more like Pascal and Sabine and Porta as it relates to food quality and choice. And again, I reiterate, take the crispy chicken skin off...

My daughter and I were in town celebrating her birthday when we happened upon this place on our way to Talula's, and decided to eat here instead. We're sorry we did. We were immediately seated outside, and our waiter promptly took our drink orders. We ordered the bread with roasted garlic as an appetizer, which arrived fairly quickly, and the buccatini and a salad with salmon as our entrées. The bread was decent but needed salt to complement the richness of the garlic and oil. Over the next 20 minutes, the waiter came to check on us twice, but didn't mention or acknowledge any delay in our dinner service. We just said "yup, the bread is still fine". Then he disappeared completely for another 30 minutes, until I finally went inside. There was one patron at the bar, and one table seated in the dining room. I informed the hostess/foh that we'd been waiting nearly an hour for our pasta and salad entrées. She was very apologetic and went back to the kitchen to inquire. I heard her ask our waiter for the status and he replied "they're making it right now" with no further explanation. She returned to let me know it would be up shortly, and we said we'd rather just take it to go at that point. She apologized again and let us know our dinner would be comped. 5 minutes later, our waiter brought out a bag, dropped it on our table, said "this is all covered", and left. We walked over to the waterfront and found a bench to sit and eat our takeout, but when we opened the bag, there was only the pasta entrée inside. No salmon salad, no utensils or napkins. At that point we accepted our fate, and resigned to eating boardwalk crepes. At least there wasn't a hefty check to add insult to injury, but after opening our takeout bag, I regretted even leaving a pity $20...