Last Friday night Julian and I attended a dinner with our dinner group at Otto, which is a newer restaurant on 18th & Hawthorne. We'd been wanting to check it out, and it was a bonus that we could walk there. It was nice to go to a dinner group outing, we hadn't been to one since mid-May, party due to general craziness and also due to budget constraints. These dinners do tend to add up because they're usually at "fancy" restaurants, which we've really cut back on.
We had a nice time, and sat near a super nice couple that we'd never met before (and near other great people too of course). Liz, another dinner group member that is a sweetie, even gave us a cool book for little Hank, which everyone got a kick out of - it's called "Go the F*ck to Sleep" and it has a minimum of one cuss word per page, but usually more. Funny - but probably not something we'll be reading Hank to bed any time soon. But that was so darn nice of her to think of us and I'm sure we'll share it with him someday.
So on to the restaurant...it was not packed, which isn't a good sign for a Friday night. I'd seen the menu on-line and it was the same one when we got there, which is always nice (when you have something already picked out). Julian and I started with shrimp fritters and a salad. Each were $7. The fritters were literally 2 small fritters with a quinoa tabbouleh salad and it was tasty but way too small. I only had one bite of salad, I didn't want to eat all of it on Julian, and it was nothing to write home about and was underdressed. It was also the only salad on the menu - which is not cool because I almost always order a salad and like a choice. For our main dishes we shared a Neptune roll (lobster, shrimp & crab) that was $13 and the grilled sturgeon over corn succotash for $17. Both were yummy, but the roll came with absolutely nothing else (at least throw in some potato chips!) and the fish was a very small portion. The dessert was great though - I got the salted carmel gelato with espresso poured over it - really good and worth it for $6.
The wine list was not great, with 3 red wines by the glass: one for $9, one for $10 and one for $11. Too expensive. I'm a big fan of a good priced house wine in the $6 or $7 range.
So overall - good food, but not enough bang for the buck. We didn't feel ripped off, but we probably won't be going back either. Not one person had leftovers to take, or food left on a plate sent back to the kitchen - not really a great sign when our bill was as huge as it must have been. I would recommend they tweek their menu to be less expensive if they want to survive - Portland already has enough fancy pants restaurants and I'd hate to see them go out when the owners moved all the way across the country to start this place.
