MAASS Restaurant at The Four Seasons — Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale

We did the chefs counter experience and overall the dessert and service saved this experience for us. The food was good but many dishes are not unique, and it's a bit underwhelming for the price. We have eaten at many fine dining and Michelin restaurants and we're honestly surprised it has a star. It's not bad but it doesn't feel like it's JUST there yet. Even the drinks were just okay (and my drink was not prepared correctly ) Detailed review to follow:

The chefs counter experience is dazzling; meats are being grilled on an open wood fire, sous chefs are shouting out kitchen jargon while laughing, and everything you are about to eat is being prepared in front of your eyes. You truly feel like you're in the kitchen.

Sitting at the chefs counter you experience next level service; each guests meal is brought out at the same time as the others, allowing you to all experience the same dish in unison while your server explains, in great detail, what went into your dish.

Our snacks were good and we enjoyed the pb&j play macaroons and oyster but I felt the potato w foie gras was one note salt, my partner liked it but said it needed a fresh element.

Some dishes we had were good but forgettable, like yellowtail with ponzu. Not bad but how many restaurants serve that these days? Yellowtail is an exceptional fish here in Florida but it would have been nice, and we expected, for it to be elevated in a new way.

Now on to the dishes we loved; the rice, egg custard, palate cleansers, play on raspberries, and the hazelnut shaved ice dessert. All of the desserts were phenomenal, even the mandolin - simple but elevated with glaze and citrus.

We had upgraded our menu and were shocked at how little wagyu we received as well. It was great, don't get us wrong, but we expected a little more and we are used to fine dining portions.

Overall we gave the whole meal 7.5-8 out of 10. It was consistently good. Some dishes were great. Many felt like they were missing something - the main fish dish needed some sort of acid or fat (also we were surprised at the choice of a Virginia fish as a main instead of a Florida one), the bread was good but could have been elevated with an herb butter or had a Japanese powder in it. Small things like that felt like they were missing.

Also it would have been nice to see more local Floridians ingredients used that play nicely with the concept here of Japanese and modern mix. We have plenty of unique ingredients that new chefs to our area could be (and in our opinion) should be using to showcase the land they are on. It may be would have taken the meal to the next level (lionfish, key limes , Seminole pumpkins, kingfish, sea grapes, purple bush plums, strawberries, tomatoes, Malabar Spinach (or the other two types as we have three), swamp cabbage, etc).

Hopefully this is not too harsh of a review but helps others on what to expect. We thought overall, it was overpriced for the quality of the meal when it came to uniqueness and overall taste of the main dishes. The creativity was great however and the mastery is noted, again especially with the desserts.

We live very close by and will be back for happy hour but may not have a full meal again here unless the creativity...

Finally, a true fine dining experience in Broward! A flawless dinner from start to finish, “worth a detour” as I’m sure the Florida Michelin Guide will say soon.

The focus of the restaurant is “contemporary wood-fired cuisine”, and the staff took care to highlight the blazing hearth in the back of the kitchen, which created a stunning wood-fired smell that (gently!) filled the space. Wood-fired elements unite the Japanese-European menu items and locally-inspired cocktails but were far from overbearing - no “liquid smoke”, but think charred scallion oil for your caviar and king crab-stuffed avocado, or smoked pineapple juice to add complexity to a cocktail.

Service from every team member is friendly and personalized from start to finish - they even knew my name by the number I called from (or perhaps the time I called about). We were all addressed by name throughout the meal. Our lead server, Nick, was friendly and knowledgeable, sharing stories and providing expert knowledge/context to the menu theme and individual dishes. I love fine dining but dislike the mechanical, stuffy, unwelcoming service that sometimes comes with it - you will not find that stuffiness here.

The menu is a la carte at this time, with a tasting menu set to debut in 2024. Despite being a la carte, the tasting menu touches were there, with an amuse-bouche and a post-dessert sweet from the chef. The menu is divided into snacks, starters, mains, and desserts, with a concise but diverse cocktail/mocktail menu to accompany it. I had high expectations going in, but even those expectations were exceeded - textures and flavors were meticulously executed while remaining playful. Literally nothing was a “miss”. Like any Chef Ryan restaurant, heavy-hitting ingredients like foie gras, truffle, and caviar are featured, but were never overbearing or solely carrying a dish - they were luxurious but fun, and played in harmony with other flavors present, like the miso peanut butter and smoked strawberry foie gras macarons - technically perfect, vivaciously flavorful, and just fun.

We had the turbot main - while denoted on the menu as being for two, it probably could have fed four, because the three of us (with our big appetites) were more than satisfied by the veritable feast it provided. The turbot was carved and plated tableside; with the white truffle supplement (which was worth the price for the scent alone), we also had what looked like half of an Alba white truffle shaved tableside over the accompanying black truffle maitake rice. Accompanying these still were the beer-battered tempura-esque turbot wing (to evoke fish and chips) and croissant-like layered brioche rolls with butter.

Desserts were also worth saving room for - the miso caramel sauce that came with the fermented banana dessert will live on in my dreams, but the mochi taco and the chocolate mille-feuille (“like a Ferrero Rocher”, as Nick put it) were also outstanding.

TL;DR: get here ASAP. I even live near Chef Ryan’s other restaurants in DC and am still thinking about when I can come...

Please please please do not waste your money here. We were truly shocked by how bad the food was. I will go through this dish by dish because if you are reading this, I want you to really understand. For reference, I am a professional trained chef, and I actually usually leave positive, not negative, reviews.

We first shared the pepperoni and cheddar stuffed chicken wings. The presentation when they came out was nice and we were eager to be impressed. However, the skin wasn’t even crispy, the stuffing had essentially no flavor (a trend you will come to see), and the sauce added nothing to the dish. This is when my spidey sense began to tingle.

Then came the tuna crudo, which I will admit was fine, but also just fine - forgettable. We also got the charred avocado, which was apparently a signature dish. Any supposed charred flavor was apparently left to our imagination, and even a lobster and caviar filling couldn’t save this from being again hopelessly mediocre. And the corn!!! This creamed corn looked like regurgitated baby food and did not taste much better. This was one dish that was not just unremarkable, but inedible. We also had the stuffed morels, which was shocking because I don’t know how you make morel mushrooms bland. What alchemy is this! And the last appetizer was the maitake mushroom rice. Now, this one actually did taste nice, but for $21, was literally a thimble of rice.

We shared some main courses next - and this is where the realization that we had been hoodwinked really sunk in. Let’s talk about the brioche stuffed chicken. The entire dish consisted of one breast cut in half. That’s it. Do you like crispy chicken skin? Good. Me too. This skin could only be described as “chewy”. The fancy steak knife we were presented with much fanfare as if we were selecting a samurai sword struggled to cut through this leathery substance. The stuffing, again, had absolutely no flavor, and the breast itself had the texture of a meal you’d expect to be served on Spirit Airlines. Dry, mealy, and lukewarm.

Ok, so the last dish we had was the Waygu short rib. For $56, it came with two tiny slivers of short rib and nothing else. And it was FINE. The sauce was minimal, the flavor unremarkable, and to top it all off, it was essentially room temperature.

The service was well executed and the room is beautiful, so we were very much hoping to like this place. But the only thing we had that was enjoyable was the bread that came with the mains.

This felt like a movie because we actually - for the first time in our lives - went and got a burger and fries after dropping $360 on this meal. Partially because we were still hungry but really more because we wanted to eat something that actually...