My friend Katie’s birthday was this week, and she invited me to join her and her sister to a birthday lunch at Azur. Last time I ate here was several years ago (thinking it was 2010), and I was not blown away then (see original review below). However, I am always happy to give a place another try, especially after a prolonged time has elapsed. Things change, right?
Like last time, I love that they have parking! I pulled up and got a spot right away. My friends were already seated so I joined them at our table and we perused the menu after saying our hellos. The menu looked great; with a selection of egg dishes, savory and sweet options, we had a difficult time choosing. But choose we did. However, we were confused by the wait staff. We had two different people that seemed to trade our table on and off which made ordering confounding. We weren’t sure who was taking our order and it seemed that they were not sure either. In the end, we got what we ordered after awhile, placing our order multiple times with multiple people.
We ordered blackberry Bellinis to start and toasted to Katie’s birthday. These were delicious, by the way. Then we ordered an avocado toast for the table. It looked wonderful, topped with a gorgeous bruschetta. It was somewhat lemony, and while it was decent tasting, I would not order it again as it was not anything special.
Katie ordered the Roesti Eggs Benedict. It was a potato pancake topped with brie, prosciutto, arugula, poached eggs topped with hollandaise sauce. She did enjoy her meal, but said that there was a high potato to other ingredient ratio.
Kim ordered the braised beef rib hash and eggs. This was served with potatoes and a truffle hollandaise sauce. This looked absolutely amazing, but the amount of truffle oil used was overpowering so that was pretty much all you could taste.
I went with a toasted gnocchi frittata with smoked bacon and caramelized onions. All I have to say is that this was a most underwhelming dish. It was dry and pretty much tasteless. The bacon was not rendered well, so I kept getting bites a fat which turned me off to no end. The best part of my dish was the piece of toast that accompanied the frittata.
Brunch for the 3 of us was about $75 plus tip. Kind of expensive for what we received in my opinion. Especially since the service was not that good. With the exception of being served fresh water, not off someone else table like we saw happen last time, the experience was much the same. I do not see myself coming here again.
Original Review posted on www.gotothekeys.com in 2010:
Azur was a restaurant that I had been looking forward to trying for a while as the menu looked devine. Located downtown Key West where parking is at a premium, I was thrilled to find out that they had parking avialable, and when we arrived we got a spot right away. We walked in at around 11am on New Years Eve for brunch and immediately liked the elegant yet relaxed atmosphere with both indoor and outdoor seating options (although a few of the chairs were rusting and the patio area could have used a cleaning). Azur was not crowded like most of the area restaurants are in season. Even so, after we were seated at an outdoor table and given menus, it took about fifteen minutes before anyone came over to even take a drink order! Then it took about another 15 minutes for them to bring us out coffees (in cracked cups). While we were waiting we saw the waiter actually take a couple of glasses of water off of a customer’s table and give them to customers at another table. YUCK! And speaking of the waiter (there was only one for the entire restaurant) while he was not rude, he certainly was not pleasant either. This place is seriously understaffed and it really bleeds out into the diner’s experience, overshadowing the food quality. I ordered the eggs benedict, my mother ordered the Portuguese sweet bread French toast, and my husband oredered a burger. They were all good entrees, but they were not out of this world. Perhaps we would have enjoyed our meals more if the service were not so lacking. Especially when paying fine dining prices for a less than mediocre experience.
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