Bayleaf is a new vegetarian restaurant on 47th and division. They built their own building, complete with parking (a fucking rarity ’round here). Everything about this restaurant bothers me in some small way–but not enough to really care. The building is bland, inside and out, of stripmall-style construction and green tea paint scheme. The art on the wall is the same art you’ll find attached to the walls of cut-rate day spas and ‘asian themed’ red roof inns. In a city where restaurant spaces are either designed extremely well or extremely poorly (on purpose), Bayleaf occupies an uncomfortable space betwixt–not designed well enough to have soul, not designed poorly enough to have character–just, well, bland.
Unfortunately, the same is true of the food. Billy’s Dad got, whatever the menu called it, general Tso’s mushrooms. The plate could have come out of any half decent chinese place from here to ATL. My dish of pickled mustard greens, pine mushrooms and ‘soy product’ was this: canned mushrooms, low quality pickled greens, and ‘soy product’ that resembled my worst recollections of turkey lunchmeat. It’s not that it tasted bad, but it did not taste good. They do get bonus points for offering ‘multi grain’ rice, which looked to me to be a mix of brown and red rice, which added some complexity to the dishes.
Big-L got corn chowder, which was alright, but nothing to write about, so i’ll stop.
funny occurance–a cook let out a sneeze so loud that the entire restuarant stopped talking for a minute. We’d already gotten our food, but i did spy a few other customers eyeing their food dubiously post-sneeze.
Another thing, no booze. I like booze.
Verdict: blah. I certainly didn’t hate it, but i wasn’t impressed.
