Eighty percent of the WBC and some special guests went out for a celebratory dinner on Saturday night. We were going out for pleasure, not business, so we weren’t going to write reviews. However, the experience we had at the Karma Lounge in Ossining led us all to agree that our readers deserve to know about what transpired. Since we weren’t planning on working, we didn’t take any pictures of the food or the establishment. Hopefully our reviews paint a clear enough picture.
Karma Lounge
175 Main Street
Ossining, NY 10562(Map It!)
Attendees: Shelley and friends, Pat, Sylvia, Jeffrey
A group of us decided to go to Karma Lounge in Ossining for a nice dinner on Saturday night. I suggested that we go to the place–it’s conveniently located for our group, the online menu looked appealing, the photos of the interior of the restaurant posted on its website looked nice, and I was in the mood to try someplace new.
Sadly, the experience can best be summed up in one word: inconsistent.
Now, Karma Lounge touts itself as a tapas/martini bar place. The interior is attractive, if a bit generic–exposed brick walls are adorned with wall sconces holding large candles and some sort of abstract art. The furniture and floor are a dark wood tone. Their two-sided regular menu includes a full page of tapas dishes, and on the flip side about 10 kinds of salads and a tempting, comprehensive, and pleasantly varied dessert menu. The martinis get their own menu, and we were also presented with a one-page handwritten list of specials. The first thing that struck me was the nature of the dishes on the specials list. One half contained more tapas dishes, but the other side contained an assortment of full-size meals, including a surprising amount of Italian dishes. Want to get some chicken parmigiana at a tapas place? Then Karma Lounge is the place to go.
I chose two tapas dishes: the Grilled Skirt Steak and the Southwestern Chicken Wonton. The skirt steak was actually very enjoyable and flavorful–three skewers with steak marinated in a teriyaki and lime sauce. The steak was well cooked and the marinade was a pleasant blend of flavors. No complaints.
Unfortunately I can’t say the same for the Southwestern Chicken Wonton. This was an item featured on the handwritten “Specials” tapas list. The description of the dish said that it was “crispy to bite, delightful to taste.” (Yes, really.) Crispy, yes. Deligthful…I’ll put it this way, the best description of this dish that I can come up with is that it’s no better than the Tex Mex eggrolls at Cheesecake Factory. (Side note: this is the second review I’ve written in the last three weeks that includes a reference to Cheesecake Factory. Coincidence? No, there must be some higher meaning. I really should ask them for some sort of compensation for all the advertising I’m giving them. Cheesecake Factory. See, I did it again!)
Speaking of cheesecake, this was one of only 3 dessert options available at Karma Lounge that evening, in spite of the eight desserts listed on the menu. I mean, seriously, no ice cream? Come on, they could have even sent someone from the kitchen to run down the road to the Purple Monkey, or even the local Stop N’ Shop. The “signature” cheesecake was small, round, and I suspect had once been frozen. The same goes for the red velvet cake. Given the suspected frozen nature of these two desserts, I was surprised that Karma Lounge didn’t have their “chocolate fudge” dessert, which, based on its description, could have really been nothing more than those little Betty Crocker microwavable chocolate dessert bowls. But we’ll never know. The third dessert we got was rice pudding, which wasn’t even on the menu, and the spoonful I tried of it was warm and hard. (Yes, that really is how I described the rice pudding.)
Sylvia and Jeff have already described the unbelievable number of regular menu dishes that we were told were not available that evening, and you’ve heard about the confusion we experienced when half of the table’s meals arrived a good 15 minutes before the other half’s meals. And who can forget when Sylvia was told once food started arriving that the dish she had ordered was unavailable. It’s like each of our meals was submitted on a separate check, as though the kitchen didn’t know that all of these meals were going to the same table.
Each stage of our meal was preceded by what can only be described as an excessively long wait time. Even the time between we gave our credit cards to pay and when the server came back with them was too long. To give you the whole idea, we arrived at 7:30 and we left a little after 10. We also all groaned a bit at the price. We each decided to split the bill evenly between the six of us, and including tip our contributions came to $36 each. That’s some dinner. Given the considerable investment of both time and money (and let’s face it, emotional stress) that we had put into this dinner, the WBC decided to skip breakfast on Sunday and take a well-deserved holiday. (And skipping breakfast on Sunday turned out to be a good call since at least one of us woke up on Sunday with, in the words of Andy Bernard, a “boo-boo tummy”. We suspect it was a seafood-related problem.)
Karma Lounge has a lot of potential, but they really need to get their act together. Our waitress tried her best to be friendly and perky, but that really can’t make up for the numerous other areas that were lacking that evening. I think the experience we had on Saturday night is a signal that Karma Lounge would last only a few months longer if things don’t change. I think they should narrow their menu–if you want to be a tapas place, then just focus on the tapas, get rid of the random Italian dishes. (They could take a page from Peniche in White Plains, which does tapas justice.) Karma Lounge is a nice idea and a nice attempt to add some new life to downtown Ossining. I hope they make it, but only if they make some serious improvements.
I know we said no reviews, but I feel that I need to tell our public what unfolded at Karma.
Talk about Karma. If the proprietors of the Karma Lounge in Ossining truly believe in the concept, they will have what’s coming to them. After our little celebratory dinner, my general feelings towards our experience at the Karma Lounge was not a satisfying one.
Our reservation was for 7:30, hardly late. As we ordered, one of us tried to order the “Tai baby back rib” tapas off the hand written special menu. We were then informed that they were out of those. Fine, that can happen.
When Shelley first sent out the link for the place, the first thing I noticed was the ravioli with an apple and ricotta filling. I was really excited for them, so I ordered them to accompany the salad I was sharing with Pat.
The food came out piecemeal. This was after the waitress had specifically asked us if we wanted our meals to come out together when we ordered. Why ask if you’re going to bring out three dishes and then make the rest of us wait?
After three of meals came out, the waitress then decided to inform me that the ravioli was not available. What? Now you tell me? Great.
So, I went with the blackened tuna with mango salsa and portabello mushroom rice. Sigh…it was no ravioli, and it cost me more than twice as much (but I shared with Pat, so it wasn’t too bad).
It was downhill from there, the blow cushioned by the rather enjoyable Mojito Martini I had. For dessert, we were limited to cheesecake, rice pudding (which wasn’t on the menu), and one serving of red velvet cake, which we had to ask our waitress to save for us while we were eating our dinner. Really. The entire dessert menu was not available except for those three (technically two, since it was the last red velvet) items. Not even the vanilla ice cream.
This place opened up earlier this year, and it seems like either they were giving up, or they just didn’t understand how to run a restaurant. How do you run out of half your menu items on a Saturday night? How is it that our food came out so scattered and slow when the place was not full? I just don’t get it.
What can be said about the Karma Lounge in Ossining? I was going to write a witty review using the lyrics from “Karma Chameleon,” that 1983 hit from the Culture Club, maybe even embed some music into this post. To be quite honest, this place doesn’t deserve my wit.
The service was terrible. It seemed that everything we ordered was unavailable. Mind you, we arrived at 7:30 pm on a Saturday, which I believe is prime time for dinner. How can a restaurant be out of mostly everything on a Saturday night? Also, the timing of the food was inconsistent. After ordering, the waitress told us that usually the food all comes out at the same time, almost as a warning, and asked us if that was OK. Fantastic, we thought. Alas, when the food did start to come out, it was slow going. Some dishes came out, some didn’t. One even was canceled as it was being cooked.
The food wasn’t spectacular. In my mind, it wasn’t even all that good. I had the mussels, which I have to say were good, but could have been better. I understand that it’s supposed to be a small dish since it’s under the “Tapas” heading, but for the price I paid, I feel like it should’ve been served on a bed of noodles or something. Noodles aren’t that expensive.
It is my understanding that this place is rather new. Well, it’s not going to last very long if their biggest pull is the live DJ that was setting up as we were leaving. The location is a nice location. It’s right off Main Street along a paved and well-lit section of the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail. A suggestion would be to maybe steer clear of the Tapas menu and stick to a menu that is a good dinner menu full of fresh ingredients. Maybe stock the ingredients enough to make it through a Saturday and drop the random iPod driven sound track of various terrible 90’s music genres. There’s so much potential at Karma Lounge but no follow through.
Erin
February 26, 2011 at 7:10 pm
Having lived in Ossining all of my life, I was super excited to try this place. It seemed like just the type of place that Ossining needed, a nice place to lounge and chat with friends. Having said that, I was extremely dissapointed after doing just that, going there for a girls night. Our service at the bar was ok, but after moving to their lounge area it went straight down hill. The waitress NEVER came to our table, even to clean up our drinks. We had to get up and go to the bar and get our own. Then a “band” set up and the music was so loud, we couldn’t hear each other talking. The atmosphere after that was not at all inviting. The staff ignored us and was clearly catering to a specific type of clientel that we didn’t fit. It was clear that they didn’t want us there, and after spending a considerable amout of money on drinks that we had to get ourselves, we left utterly disapointed. I think their customer service needs a huge overhaul if they expect to stay in business for any considerable amout of time, considering that it was a Friday night and practically empty. No excuse for their treatment of paying customers. I will never go back and know many people that would have tried it had my experience been good. But since it wasn’t, it seems Karma will loose out on lots of business.