Lenox Sophia — Restaurant in Boston

My fiancee and I are Bostonians, both vegetarians, and were looking forward to dining at Lenox Sophia. It turned out to be a (shoulder-shrugging) just okay and a somewhat underwhelming and disappointing experience. FYI - we ordered the vegetarian menu, and my comments below pertain to this experience.

Some info: The restaurant only has 2 prix-fixe menu options (vegetarian and standard/omnivore). At the time of this writing, the price for either is $109 per person (no drinks included). The restaurant does not have an alcohol license, so you can BYOB. We both ordered the vegetarian option, with a couple of bottles of sparkling water (extra charge), and our check with gratuity (and an added kitchen service charge) was approximately $350. Was this experience worth it? Not really, and certainly not for this amount, and we will not be repeating it.

Atmosphere: The restaurant is on a quiet non-descript street, on the ground floor of a residential (?) building. It is very cramped, about the size of an apartment living room - with very small wooden cafeteria-style tables. It seats about 16 people or so. Seating was uncomfortable, and very next-to-each-other (we had to hear conversations of both tables on either side, and the conversations were not particularly loud). Staff consisted of 3 people (owner, another chef, and a single waiter who attended to all 16 people - there was no place for another waiter - premises were small as I noted!). With that said, the waiter was friendly and courteous.

Meal: It was alright. One of the risks with a prix-fixe menu is that not all of the dishes may be to your liking. It's saying something when I note that the dessert was the best out of the 5! Portions may be small for the average person. We tend to be light eaters, and so were okay. The first course - some raw vegetable dish - was very forgettable. The second course - a sweet pea gelatin - was not good at all for us; the seasoning (or lack of) was off, and there an unpleasant aftertaste that persisted for a while. The main third course was pasta - it was okay, nothing special, but we had expected something more inspired than linguine could be easily replicated at home! The next main was a chickpea panisse, which was well-presented and fine, though lacking in flavor and a bit too mushy/soggy. Dessert was a flourless chocolate tart/cake, and was delicious.

Service: As I noted above, the waiter was friendly, polite, and attentive. A glaring thing is that the table next to us was receiving preferential treatment from the chefs, extra dishes and samplings... This is totally understandable, but in a restaurant of this size - where we are pretty much right next to each other where everyone could witness this - it was quite off-putting. It would also have been nice if we were asked if there were any dishes we did not like or enjoy, and were given an option to substitute away (similar to the table next to us).

If the restaurant is going to only serve 16 or so people each evening from a prix-fixe menu, making it feel as if we are dining in someone's home with a chef-prepared meal - we would expect more attentive service from the owner and chef at this price, better ambience and seating, and a more innovative menu. There was a disconnect between what the restaurant is trying to be vs. what...

Lenox Sophia has a lot of great reviews, and made this year's list of the top 50 restaurants in Boston, so we had to give it a try. The atmosphere is cute, and trendy. The restaurant is small, so make a reservation ahead of time. The price seemed reasonable ($99) for the five course tasting menu compared to some others we had been to. The food however, was very lacking in flavors, and was quite boring. I was appreciative that they had a vegetarian option and could substitute out some of the menu items to make them dairy free, but this could have been part of the problem.

The first course I got was the dairy free and vegetarian option of beet tartar with a beet chip. While it looked fancy and tasted good, it felt like it was just beets chopped up very tiny with vinegar, something I could have eaten at home. It could have been a cute amuse-bouche, but not for an entire course. The second course I got was a fried chickpea cake with cucumber. Again, it was good and presented well, but really lacked in flavor. I've had better chickpea fries at vegan restaurants. The third course was my favorite, the rice porridge or congee. The congee was good, however was mostly one note and only tasted like the salt cod that was advertised. However, salt cod is one of my favorite foods, so I was happy. I did wish it had a little more spice - the chef mentioned that there was a chili crunch on it, but we did not taste any spiciness. We got the duck for the fourth course and while the duck was very tasty, it seemed to only be seasoned with salt and pepper and there was a very tiny amount of duck jus on the plate. It was good, but again, super boring, unimaginative, and lacking flavor. I was happy that they could accommodate a dairy free dessert, but it was very hard to eat. It was a chocolate mouse that was so bitter and salty that I could barely eat half. The non dairy free dessert looked much better and tasted good.

The service was quick and the waiters were friendly, but I did wish they explained the dishes a bit more.

Overall, the food was good, but felt very un-inspired. The menu is seasonal, so I'm sure the next menu will be different, and maybe better tasting and...

My friend and I came here this weekend to try the 5 course tasting menu. The place seemed like a small apartment transformed into a small kitchen, and we liked the cozy and intimate atmosphere.

The course started with tomatoes soaked in fragrant herb water. Tomatoes were refreshing, but I could barely taste other ingredients like the gooseberries and the lemon verbena. Fortunately, the subsequent dishes were much better. Sitting on top of an aromatic sauce made of honey fermented garlic, plum, and elderflower miso, the king trumpet was a perfection. It almost smelled like freshly baked pastries, and the mushrooms were definitely our favorite part of the meal.

Arroz was essentially a crispy rice subtly flavored with squid ink, and the dry texture of the rice gave a nice contrasting texture to the seafood. The flavors of the dish was also enhanced with smoked oyster aioli which was full of umami flavor. As for the entrée, we chose the monkfish which was good. However, we didn't notice anything particularly interesting other than the onion soubise.

The finale was a chocolate bar topped with hazelnut and blackberries. The smooth texture of the chocolate worked really well with the toppings, and it tasted very similar to the ones I've tried at some of the luxury Parisien chocolate shops.

Lenox Sophia stands out as an innovative kitchen that experiments with unconventional ingredients, but the new flavor profiles are often too subtle to taste the difference. The $98 price tag does seem a bit excessive, and they try to offset the cost with the BYOB policy. However, since we weren't drinking, this was pointless. Nevertheless, I would recommend giving them a try as there aren't a lot of restaurants with tasting...