Central Table

Not only did it take a while to finalize dinner double date plans, but it also took me a while to get to Central Table Food Hall. But now I know what everyone is talking about!

If you haven’t heard, Central Table is more of a cafeteria-style restaurant during the day for lunch but at night, it turns into a regular sit-down restaurant for the dinner course. I was also surprised to see a very large bar in the middle of the hall, and it was almost full for dinner, probably because it was a Friday night.

The high ceilings give it a big and open feel and I bet it’s hoppin’ during the day at all the different food stations that are available. Yet, I still think dinner may be the best time of day to go because now you have all the different stations on one menu so you can pick and choose from each section.

Although, this does make trying to pick out dishes a little more difficult when you want one of everything!

I definitely recommend going in a group so you can share all the different dishes that are available. We ended up doing a little bit of sharing and a little bit of splitting so we could try several items at once.

We started with a couple of oysters…one of each from both coasts, and they were served with three different sauces to try. My favorite was the soy mignonette…although it made the oysters extra salty, while the red wine and cocktail sauces gave the oysters a much sweeter flavor.

Oysters

Next up was the maki rolls: salmon and tuna. Both were very small rolls of six each and made for another excellent starter. The fish was wonderfully fresh. But we were jealous of my friend’s specialty maki, all of which are unique to Central Table. Luckily, she shared with us and not only were they twice the size of our rolls, but had so much more amazing flavors . I highly recommend getting as many specialty rolls as you can!

Sushi

For our main course, we ended up splitting the Sea Scallops that were served on top of root vegetables, freekah, and rappini. I had to research these two ingredients: freekah is a roasted grain, while the rappini is a green vegetable. The dish was actually a good size for one person, but I was happy we made room for the sushi since that was definitely my favorite.

Sea Scallops

We also go to try a bite of the Spiedie pizza, which came with chicken, ricotta, roasted garlic and oregano. There was no red sauce, but still a good mix of flavors.

I definitely would love to go back because I didn’t get to try anything from their soup (butternut squash) or salads (kale!) list, or from the hot small plates (mussels!). And I really wanted one of everything off the sushi menu to be perfectly honest.

The only issue is parking…since it was cold and snowy, I was thankful for the $4 valet, but I think it’ll be much easier come spring time for walking around in the Central West End.

Resources:

Central Table Food Hall = http://centraltablestl.com/

Photos by Patience Scanlon