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FeedIn Excess
M at Miranova is magnificent, but it’s over the top and out of step
Double-cut pork chop with cider pan sauce and Brussels sprouts
Will Shilling Photos
If any restaurant in Columbus deserves a makeunder, it’s M at Miranova, the crown jewel of the Cameron Mitchell Restaurants group.
When M opened in 2001, it was a nice addition to a scene light on swanky, splurge-worthy dining options. But today, the gleaming restaurant feels almost too extravagant—a relic from a time before the economy tanked, when dropping a few hundred bucks on a nice dinner was more commonplace.
A shakeup in the form of a new chef could do wonders at a place like this, so I’ve been cautiously optimistic since learning this summer that longtime chef Jay Cottrell had moved on.
But I fear his replacement, Olivia Giesler, isn’t the woman to change things up—in a restaurant where the menu has been carefully crafted by a panel of corporate bigwigs, a chef brought up through the Cameron Mitchell Restaurants empire (Giesler actually started with the company 10 years ago as an unpaid intern) isn’t going to have much creative freedom.
The M space is magnificent, with soaring ceilings, a jaw-dropping bar and great views of the Scioto River. When you’ve got something that naturally gorgeous to work with, distracting from it with a constantly changing colored light show feels like an assault on the senses. In that way, M reminds me of restaurants in Vegas, where the brightest and most glittering restaurants are deemed the best.
A meal here is all about the wow factor, and I’ll admit to being impressed by the service. Particularly spectacular was a choreographed moment in which three servers swooped in to deliver a trio of entrees simultaneously.
I love the whimsical nature of many of the presentations, like the Three Cones starter ($18). Mini waffle cones filled with savory lobster salad, salmon gravlax and caviar are served on a metal stand seemingly designed especially for them. A roasted tomato soup ($9) is poured tableside from a saucepan onto a tiny goat cheese sandwich. A bourbon-spiked milkshake dessert ($9) is served in a child’s-size glass mug, with a housemade candy bar on the side.
And bartender Cris Dehlavi’s justly lauded cocktails are a highlight. The Black Orchid ($12), a Cosmo-esque raspberry vodkatini, is served with an actual orchid frozen into an ice cube.
The food is more problematic. Not many Columbus restaurants can get away with entree prices that hover around $40, and M’s food, while nicely executed and beautifully plated, is simply not innovative enough to warrant the markups.
A side of mashed potatoes (albeit lobster mashed potatoes) for $15? Thirty-two bucks for a bento box filled with mediocre Asian apps? Come on.
Even a Chilean Sea Bass entree for $38, a price I normally wouldn’t consider outrageous, felt skimpy. A magnificent piece of fish was immersed in a spicy Thai broth, paired with water chestnuts and light-as-air shrimp dumplings.
While priced lower, a large selection of standard-grade sushi rolls seems oddly out of place on a menu otherwise filled with European-influenced fare. Some grocery stores have a more ambitious selection than these spicy tuna rolls, dragon rolls and caterpillar rolls, several of them incorporating cream cheese (somewhat of a faux pas among sushi purists). The most inventive is a Surf-N-Turf roll ($16) made with tempura shrimp and wrapped in rare filet mignon.
My favorite dishes were the simplest: a towering double-cut pork chop ($27) drenched in a cider pan sauce and served atop bacon-spiked Brussels sprouts, or a hearty seasonal special of fall-apart tender beef short ribs ($38) with horseradish mashed potatoes and roasted root veggies.
Let’s hope Giesler is able to make her mark with seasonal treats like those homestyle short ribs. Along those lines, my advice to her and the rest of the M crew is to heed the wise words of Henry Thoreau and continue to simplify, simplify, simplify.
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RESTAURANT REVIEW
Hours: 5-10 p.m. Mon-Thu, 5-11 p.m. Fri-Sat Price range: $50 and up per person. Entrees range from $16 sushi rolls to $44 New York strip steak. Reservations: Recommended In short: Cameron Mitchell’s flashiest restaurant offers an extravagant experience, but at an inflated price. Rating: ★ ★ ★ |
RATING SYSTEM
★ ★ ★ ★ ★: outstanding |
