December 18, 2008

DEUCE BUNGALOW: SPANISH CANTINA




“THEY HAVE A LOT MORE WORK TO DO”
980 Granville St, Vancouver
website



DEUCE BUNGALOW is Granville Street's newest Lounge/Bar/Restaurant and there is the problem, it doesn't know what it wants to be and does all three styles half-heartedly. A jack of all trades and a master of none. Sporting the décor of a club & sports bar and featuring a menu filled with latin-inspired dishes, DEUCE BUNGALOW is in danger of disappearing quickly if it can’t forge its own unique identity soon and work on its food quality sooner.

My biggest issue with the place, is the overuse of pickled onions and Avocado Sour Cream, these two condiments are on virtually every dish that is served whether you like it or not. I do like both of those flavors... but not on everything! This is what we feasted on: Pablo's Mortar & Pestle Guacamole (Home-made Refried Beans, Pink Pickled Onions & warm Tortilla Chips), Deuce's Double Breaded Chicken Wings (Avocado Sour Cream, Deuce's Special Hot Sauce), Yucatan Avocado Fries (Smoked Ancho Aioli, Heirloom Tomatoes, Pink Pickled Onions) and the Salsa Verde Braised Beef Taco Skewer (Rajas, Tender Flank Steak, Chilled Gazpacho Shooter).

Their guacamole is actually quite tasty but the Black Bean Dip underneath the Guac was so hard, no chip could pierce the dip and we had to use a spoon to get any Black Bean out. The Wings were bland on their own (the breading was quite standard) but the house made hotsauce was a definite winner and brought these otherwise average wings to life. The biggest disappointment were the Avocado Fries, this is supposedly the “signature dish” at DEUCE and if you look at the online reviews, this is one of the best received dishes at the eatery. I did not like this dish at all. First off, Avocado is a subtle yet rich flavor that explodes when accompanied by another flavor, these were just slices of avocado, breaded and deep fried. So it tasted like avocado-flavored breading and to make matters worse, the Avocado was not ripe. Yikes! If this is the signature dish, it needs a lot of help. Our final dish, the Beef Tacos were probably the tastiest dish of the lot but the gazpacho shooter was a waste, it didn’t add anything to the meal.

I don’t know if I would return to DEUCE BUNGALOW, the food was only so-so and the ambiance was awkward. Is it a club? Is it a lounge? Who knows, but I will say this, if it’s a restaurant, they have a lot more work to do.

RATING: 4/10 FULL BELLIES

2 comments:

YukonNards said...

They probably have more work to do, but I like them. The menu is developing, the food tastes good, and the staff are really nice.

nausher banaji said...

Terrible experience. More staff than customers, and in spite of that the service is pathetic. It took 3 staff members to just put up a sandwich board display outside while we were waiting for our order. How many would it take to screw on a lightbulb?? After 30 minutes of waiting for our food to arrive the manager comes to our table and says the server has not even put our order through! This in spite of the fact that every 10 minutes the server had been coming to our table to tell us 'it will only be another few minutes.' And in spite of the fact that the manager himself was watching us sitting at our table and hearing us complaining to the server about the inordinate delay- after all there were only 2 tables occupied. This is just not the kind of place Vancouver needs to display to the world in 2010. Rude, absolutely Incompetent and completely unprofessional.