Editor Pick
Dragonfly
- March 25, 2001
- Rated 2 of 5 by
food&fun from Truckee, California
Dragonfly is Truckee's newest restaurant and features an Asian-fusion cuisine. The room is small, although the deck will allow for extra tables in warm weather. At lunch, tables are mostly unadorned. At dinner, they are dressed with white tablecloths, and heavy metal napkin rings in the shape of a dragonfly encircle the cloth napkins.
On the lunch menu, the falafel are very good. They are served with an interesting yogurt sauce, garnished with baby greens and drizzled with Dragonfly's version of hummus. The Vietnamese noodle bowl ($8), which is supposed to be a cross between French onion soup and Vietnamese pho was less successful. It had plenty of carmelized onions, but the combination of the heavy carmelization (almost burnt-tasting) and too much hoisin sauce in the broth made for a too-sweet and one-dimensional flavor. The "teasers" (small appetizers) on the lunch and dinner menus were excellent. Everyone at the table enjoyed the sweet and sour eggplant dip. The sweet potato gyoza (fried dumplings) had a delicious mayonnaise-y scallion dipping sauce. I ordered the mussels from the appetizer menu ($9) as a main course and they were a winner. The portion was large enough for a main course -- about 18 mussels. The fresh, tender mussels were served in a bowl of spicy green curry broth, with the delicate flavors of coconut milk and lemongrass mingling. A friend had the Vietnamese bouillabaise ($19). She loved the scallops, shrimp and mussels, but said the haddock was rubbery. (Space limitations prevent more descriptions.)
There is no dessert "menu" but the server announces the desserts, which can lead to missteps. The mango-pineapple crisp was good, but it suffered from "hidden ingredient syndrome." The topping had a lot of coconut in it, which the server did not announce as a major ingredient, and I do not like coconut. Perhaps a written menu would have made this clearer.
All of which brings me to the service. At dinner, the host and the main server were warm and professional. They seemed to know what they were doing. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the lunch staff or the people who actually served the food at dinner. At lunch, service was very inattentive. At dinner, it was inept. Utensils were removed with plates and replacements were not provided. When three of us ordered coffee, only one spoon was offered with the sugar and cream. Main courses arrived before appetizer/salad plates were cleared. The server spilled a cup of soup on one of my dinner companions and, although she apologized, a complementary drink or even an offer to take care of the dry-cleaning bill would have been a nice gesture (especially where the bill for 6 of us was more than $200). That same server almost dumped an entire noodle bowl on another customer.
Reservations at dinner, even during the week, are a must to assure a table. Unless you don't mind waiting, lunch reservations are also highly recommended.
From journal Where to Eat in Truckee