What an absolute joke this lunch was… Wally’s was recommended to me by somebody working at The Maybourne and since he has been in Los Angeles for most of his life, I figured his advice would be welcomed knowing all the best places to eat in LA. (Supposedly.) Let us just say it was a super disappointment… Upon reading the menu what enticed me was their lobster salad: Warm Maine lobster, baby gem lettuce, avocado, heirloom tomato, crispy quinoa, tomato vin. It all sounds nice! What arrived were some measly pieces of over cooked lobster, drowned whereby you could hardly see them with the usual ratio of salad to protein being quite unbalanced. It is just not possible to sell this at this price despite what the chef might think… It does not work… There is always a challenge when you incorporate lobster in a salad, I recognise that the product is expensive, but this is not what I am talking about here. It is more to the point of is it worth it and working well as a dish?
I was imagining a lobster still in its shell being presented this way somehow with the salad. The look of this and how it is given to the diner falls short and ‘feels’ like you are being abused a little bit. I complained to the waiter and to be fair to him, he handled my feedback well and he already stated that people before me had said the same thing. If this is the case, the chef should listen and not think that he/she always knows best. What followed next was another plate of lobster on the side to address my issue of there not being enough. (Not sure if this was completely the right thing to do but it did make up for something I guess…) It just was not what I imagined the dish to be in my head.
When I received the bill, the restaurant manager reduced the price which improved things further. Overall, this was not a good introduction to Wally’s which is a popular choice in Beverly Hills. I do not think I will bother to give it another chance, because I thought it was another LA fail.
