Aerlume Seattle — Restaurant in Seattle

Came here for a company holiday dinner for my small office. 8 people. More expensive than what I'd pay for on my own, so definitely grading this place on a curve of expectations based on their very high prices. Overall, I'd say the food was good, great for a few dishes (apps better than entres). Drinks were good, but not great. Desserts were good, but not great. Waterfront view and coat service and kinda nice ambience, but its built for events, not for special dates or intimate gatherings. We shared a bunch of apps, ordering most of the options, shared a couple bottles of a Pepper Bridge Cab, ordered separate entres and cocktails, shared several desserts. I'll run through my impressions of each:

Apps: Essential Bread & Butter - surprisingly good brioche, fig jam butter worked well.

Citrus Marinated Beets - ok. Chevre was good, but beets were boring.

Peruvian Steak Bites - surprisingly just ok. Good, but disappointingly not that tender or flavorful.

Grilled Spanish Octopus - pretty good. Cooked nearly perfectly, maybe just a tad overdone, but it was on the mark. Seasoning was good.

Dungeness Crab Lettuce Wraps - very good. Possibly best item on the menu. Build your own set up where you scoop the crab salad into a red cabbage or lettuce leaf and add cilantro and sauce. Slightly spicy, just right.

Yellowfin Tuna Poke - surprisingly good. Looked like another boring tuna app thing with chunks of tuna and rice crisps to scoop them in. But the fish was quite goodbas was the light marinade it was in.

Crispy Cauliflower - very good. Best cauliflower app I've ever had. The cauliflower is indeed crispy. Not tempura, but kinda fried. Unsure how they accomplished the effect, but I like it. And the slightly spicy salsa raisin, greens, around it was very good.

Cocktails: Angel of Skye - very good. Uses their unique single barrel bourbon.

Weekend at Barbara's - ok. Big attempt at presentation, but to no flavorful or olfactory effect. The flavors cancel each other out and make for an unexciting, unmemorable cocktail.

Pepper Bridge Cabernet Sauvignon - eh. Not bad, but not good. Perhaps if I was drinking this with red meat rather than the apps, it would pair better. But for a $150 bottle of wine, this was a HUGE disappointment.

Large plates: Buttermilk Fried Chicken - ok. Not in my top 10 fried chicken or even top 5 in Seattle. Big portion, enjoyable crisp, moist meat. But there was a limpness to the crisp and it mostly slid off the meat so i was eating them separately. Little flavor in the crisp.

Seared Scallops - I actually just got the add-ons with the fried chicken. The scallops were good, but slightly overdone and the sauce was nothing special. Satisfying, but not my favorite scallops in Seattle.

Desserts: Carrot Cake - good, but we all had better homemade carrot cakes.

Butterscotch Pudding - pretty good. A lot going on in that little jar. Perhaps a little too sweet. Enjoyed how its served cold, but I think I would prefer a hot bread and cold sorbet contrast, so I was a little disappointed.

Brandy Alexander cocktail - pretty good. Better than the main desserts themselves.

Other notes: Our server was mostly good and clearly experienced. Cocktails took longer than apps or mains from when we ordered them - bar was a bit backed up. After dessert was ordered, our server ignored us and didn't offer anymore water. I had to get up and find and serve our table water a couple times. The bathrooms require a code and are very small and boring (though clean), not what I would expect from a high end restaurant like this. Overall, this was a very good evening. Would I come here again on my own dime? No. Am I glad I was able to enjoy an evening here tonight? Yes. Based on the price though, I would have expected everything to be a bit more special, hence only 3 stars. High bar here to get 4 or 5 stars at that...

I was excited to come here but was quite disappointed. While the restaurant has a nice atmosphere, the first strange part was the service. We were sitting for about 10 minutes or more before I saw a busboy and asked for some water (the restaurant was quite empty and it seemed like there was a very high ratio of wait staff to patrons walking around). The service was all or nothing, nothing in between. Either we had 3 people uncomfortably hovering over us in a row interrupting us while we were talking (which seemed rude), or it was impossible to get anyone's attention. I then asked for an agreement to be omitted from the drink I ordered and it was made out to be a big deal with "I'll see if the bartender can do that," and later a confirmation that it was possible. Didn't seem like it should be such a big deal. Any good bartender should be able to do that. Our drinks overall were not good. There was almost no alcohol in them and another person in my party refused to even finish hers because it was so bad (her drink was directly off the menu). The food was also pretty bland. My dad had had the steak before and enjoyed it but the food we ordered this time was ok, but nothing I'd ever go for again. There was ZERO salt on anything and we had to ask for salt and pepper (and I'm someone who generally doesn't use much salt). Everything felt like it had been cooked in an obscene amount of fat so it was heavy and took over the taste of the food (spinach just tasted like butter and there was no spice, octopus had weird tiny bits of ground chorizo all over that didn't fit the dish and had zero salt, crab melt had no salt and copious amounts of heavily-dressed slaw instead, mashed potatoes and steak bites had no salt, etc.). I gave up on the cocktails and went with wine, and the wine was served at room temperature. The manager had said he's a sommelier, yet every sommelier should know that red wine should be served slightly chilled. Overall, unimpressed and disappointed considering the restaurant represents itself as being sophisticated...

Left with a pretty underwhelmed experience. Was a birthday celebration for my partner. They had a little card on the table saying happy birthday to them with rose petals which was very sweet. We did not get a window seat as requested (they let me know that wasn't a guarantee) they called to confirm my reservation twice, asked me the same questions three times about allergies, each call and at the restaurant, I appreciate them being thorough but felt like maybe departments don't communicate with each other much. They also did not mention until that final call that there was a buyout of the restaurant and we would be shuffled to a side room. It was very loud due to the buyout. Our table was not bussed prior to the main dish being dropped off, and our waiter had not come by to see if we wanted a second drink order prior to our main courses being dropped off-wine would have been nice. I believe he had a table with a bachelorette party next to us which seemed to take up most of his time. The person who filled our water splashed water all over the table each time they filled the water. The 35 dollar app was bland and I did not enjoy it. The brussel sprouts on our main dish were burnt. Positives. The meat was very tender. The drinks were delicious. And our waiter was very nice, the entire staff was very nice for that matter. Although I did not like that the waiter held his hands out to hold mine at the end as I was paying. That was very strange. My entire life I've never had a waiter do that. The experience was not bad but for that price (265) I've had much better. I also didnt like that the waiter had the bill open and in view of my partner while they were explaining the service charge as I would have liked the total to be private. With the restaurant being so busy it felt like there wasn't much attention to detail. Would not necessarily recommend, which is unfortunate because I appreciate the emphasis on locally sourced food, and...