F.L.X. Table — Restaurant in City of Geneva

My wife and I almost never leave reviews on restaurants but we discussed this meal the entire 45 minute drive home and felt inclined to leave a review because of our experience.

Overall, we wanted to leave a positive review and felt bad about leaving 2 stars but there were so many flaws and issues with this meal and its execution. I don’t pretend to be a food critic but these are some of my observations:

Service is a bit cold, rushed and uninspired. The “chef” struggled through pronunciation of dishes and items in the dishes and at times struggled to explain each course which didn’t convey confidence in his abilities.

He never changed gloves in between handling the duck, vegetables, dessert etc. which was off putting.

The first course or bread and crudités was a bit strange. The bread itself was delicious but the vegetables were raw. The carrots clearly hadn’t been washed properly. The sauces were “ok” but they look like they are the same sauces or variations of them from every other review I read on Google. Also, 2/3s of our table left the vegetables untouched or lightly eaten. It was an odd offering.

The amuse bouche was a smoky chicken broth which had a nice flavor but absolutely did not connect to the rest of the meal.

The duck dish was STRANGE. It was a very long, floppy, poorly cut piece of duck that looked like it was sous vide prepared. My wife saw the chef remove the breast from the sous vide and then cut them and serve them. No pan sear for the fat side so by the time it was served, it was like warm and that delicious duck fat was chewy instead of crispy. Also, as my wife pointed out, the chef had a very difficult time cutting the duck which was embarrassing in itself for him. The greens the served the breast over were so unfitting for this dish. Half of my greens were just mint leaves. Disjointed, unrelated “salad” to the floppy duck breast that was served.

The ramp risotto with egg yolk was nice. Hint: Add some crispy shallots or charred leek to the top for texture

The caviar add on was unnecessary and was clearly for an up charge. I feel like an idiot for agreeing to it. It added no flavor to the dish.

The dessert tasted good but presentation was SLOPPY! My wife and I both watched in horror as the chef didn’t change his gloves and then struggled through a pathetic attempt at making an ice cream quenelle which he abandoned and served a misshapen slop of ice cream on the final dish. The rhubarb was runny so it mixed with the ginger crumble and made a mess. Lastly, the pop rocks were unnecessary and created a very strange and odd sensation that really had no place in the dessert.

The people that mention how rushed you feel at the end of the meal are dead on. You basically eat your last bite and then are ushered out of the dining room to another more cramped area to pay for your meal. Essentially told “you can stick around but just not here.”

This restaurant has a ton of potential and some of the dishes are redeemable. With a little more finesse, this could’ve been a good, but not great meal. However, the odd progression of dishes couple with the “chef’s” seeming ineptitude and end of dinner rush made for a lackluster meal. Certainly not worth the...

FLX Table describes itself as "one of the Finger Lakes premier dining experiences." I'm afraid it is not. In fact, it is a poor imitation of gourmet dining. We went with high expectations and left with a feeling of great let-down.

Our prix fixe menu started with raw vegetables and crusty bread and assorted dips and flavored butters. While the bread was tasty, the crudites were not; the butters and dips were, however fine. It was a facile, unsophisticated start to the five course meal. This was followed by small fresh oysters and a cucumber salad with octopus and a Szechuan chili-mayo sauce. The managers should know that specialties like raw oysters and octopus are not to the liking of many diners, us included. Alternatives should be offered. We skipped both. A wee morsel of meatball followed. O-k-a-y... The entree, New Zealand venison with a quinoa tabbouleh aioli was tough and lacking in flavor. In fact, mine was so tough and gristly, I had to spit out most of it on my plate. It was like chewing leather. I finally gave up and abandoned the rest. The dessert was an unremarkable strawberry crumble. No coffee. No tea. The staff rushed the 15, or so, diners out with toasted marshmallows.

While the servers were unfailingly cheerful and responsive, the service was little better than what one encounters in most (less expensive) upscale restaurants. However, dirty silverware went unchanged between courses and table debris clean-up was spotty. There were no salt and pepper shakers.

The rather small combined dining/kitchen space is bright and cheery, with lovely boxes of herbs hanging from the ceiling. That said, the decor is bland and forgettable. Worst of all is the acoustics. The restaurant would benefit from strategically placed acoustic tiling, area rugs and wall tapestries to deaden the noise.

We opted for a pre-dinner wine tasting at FLX's neighboring shop, called, "Provisions." Our server was very informed and pleasant and went out of her way to provide us with a broad sampling of Fingerlakes wines. Sadly, all but a sparkling Riesling ranged from terrible to mediocre.

The more a restaurant charges, the more discriminating I am. After all, for $100-plus per head, a customer has every expectation of a very special dining experience. Not only spectacular, flaw-free cuisine, but service with dash and panache and creativity. FLX sorely lacks in all these areas. Exemplars of this class of gourmet dining can be found at the Inn at Little Washington (Virginia), Summit at the Broadmoor (Colorado Springs, CO) and the North Fork Table & Inn (Southold, NY). The dining experiences at these establishments linger in your memory literally for years. Sadly, this is not true of FLX, which we found forgettable at best. Foremost on my mind as we departed was where I could grab a hot pizza.

I really wanted to rate FLX with several stars, but, unfortunately, they couldn't even make the cut past one star in our case. As others have remarked, FLX is really a wine bar posing as a Michelin-wannabe restaurant. From other reviews, others clearly felt differently. That said, we won't...

In celebration of our fortieth, we decided to splurge on a special evening and signed up for FLX’s $600 wine-pairing dinner. It turned out to be a mixed experience. The reservation said the seating was at 5:45. We showed up at 5:40. While we waited to be seated, we were given a priced menu of drinks for consideration. At 6:00 we were taken to our private dining area which struck me as being skewed more toward isolation than intimacy with its large round bare wood table, big storefront window, and sliding door to close the room off from the other parts of the dining room.

The starter was a platter of crudities, a fresh loaf of rosemary garlic bread, and a variety of vegetable spreads and flavored butters. Accompanying the starter was a pleasant pour (the only time a wine was poured from the source bottle in front of us) of bubbly. The platter and accompaniments were fine if unremarkable.

Up next was a ceviche paired with a very nice Italian white Pinot Blanc poured into fresh glasses from two carefully measured beakers the wine steward delivered to our table - best guess a modest 3-ounce pour. The wine was excellent. The ceviche seemed fresh.

The third course was gnocchi topped with shredded duck topped with a fresh green. Gnocchi were pillowy mounds in a nice light sauce, but I found myself wondering if the shredded duck was substituted with pork, could I have told the difference? The standout for this course was a superb zinfandel. It was outstanding even if served not from the bottle but from two evenly measured beakers again delivered by the wine steward from another part of the restaurant.

The fourth course we were told was Australian-raised venison accompanied by a dollop of escalope potatoes, two thin fresh asparagus, a drizzle of brown sauce on 3 thinly sliced strips of red meat, and dark chocolate chip-like dots of black garlic. The plate was attractive though the venison was dry and could have been easily mistaken for beef. Paired with the course were the now standard two beakers of a high quality, if somewhat ordinary, cabernet sauvignon.

Our meal was capped off with banana foster cooked in individual cast-iron pans in the kitchen, flamed for effect at our table, and paired with two beakers of a pleasant well matched Italian dessert wine.

I will say, while I was somewhat put off by the use of beaker wine delivery, the wine steward did place the bottles that our wine probably came from on our table so that we could examine the labels.

Overall, the staff were attentive, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic. However, if there were any aspirations for a Michelin star-type dining experience they were only met with the bill for...