2900

User Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I was visiting El Paso and drove past 2900 when looking for a place for lunch. When I got back to the hotel and checked out the website it looked like one of the nicer places in the city.

We went there for dinner on a saturday night, the lounge area was dead, and there were about five people at the bar. On the other hand the dinning room was full so that was a good sign. From the time we were seated and all the way out the door the staff was very friendly and attentive. Great service, never had a moment of wishing our waiter would stop by the table. He made sure we were taken care of.

Drinks were very nicely done. The bar tender knew what he was doing. For an appatizer my wife and I shared the crab cakes which were very good. As with most nicer places you are given bread with dinner. We each were served two pieces of cranberry walnut bread fresh out of the oven; it was great but we wanted to save our appatite for the main course. As far as the meals go no major complaints. I had the ravioli which was wonderful, my wife had some type of chicken, bean, and pasta dish was a bit too salty. That could have been seasoned a bit better, but it was still good. We had the chocolate trio for dessert. I thought it was all great, the wife only liked the cake...but she can be really picky.

Overall nice place, very trendy. The staff was wonderful, it was a very comfortable place, and the food was just shy of being great.

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User Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

A couple of friends and I recently visited 2900 for lunch. It was our first time to 2900 and were hoping it lived up to the hype. To our disappointment, it did not.

We all opted for the Power Lunch: soup, half sandwich, a side and dessert. The soup options were limited to carrot or ?something? bean (the waiter's accent was rather thick). The soup was actually very good and lifted our expectations.

The sandwitch options One friend ordered the chicken apple sandwich while my other friend and I ordered the corned beef sandwich. My corned beef had decent flavor but the texture left much to be desired. It had been chopped up and had the consistancy of deviled ham. The same went for the chicken sandwich, which tasted nothing like chicken, apples or anything else the menu mentioned.

For sides, we had sweet potato fries, regular french fries and potato chips. The chips were light, crisp and had good flavoring. The french fries were average and the sweet potato fries were about what you'd expect at any other restaurant. The one exception was the honey aioli that came with the sweet potato fries and was very tasty.

Dessert was a great disappointment. My friends had the chocolate ice cream and I had what the waiter called "apple saffron" ice cream. My dessert did not taste as it was described; it tasted like french vanilla ice cream from Baskin-Robbins. The sugar cookies that came with the ice cream were nothing special and tasted off the shelf. My friends' choice of chocolate had no spectacular taste different from what you'd get from a super market brand gallon of ice cream. The cookies that came with their dessert had a spicy after taste that rested uncomfortably at the back of our mouths.

While the building and restaurant itself is very nice, the meal left us regretting our choice of lunch spots. While we are willing to give their dinner menu a shot, it will be a while until we gather up the courage to risk having a bad meal.

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User Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

We were waiting for 2900 to open for the longest time and when it finally opened, we showed up 2 weeks after the opening for dinner on a weekday. Decor is very minimalist chic and very modern and we both loved the interior. Now to the important part: the food: we stared with an appetizer salad and a duo of tartare which was served very creatively. The tuna was excellent with a hit of wasabi and a cruch added by the tobiko roe. I was told to mix the steak tartare with a small quantitiey of mashers...that was a disaster. The potatoes instantly masked the flavor of the beef and whole thing tasted like mashed pototes with meaty bits..hardly what I envisioned the tartare tasking like. We had by this time devoured the bread which was excellent (one classy touch in this restaurant is that the butter is served not only in a nice butter dish, but at room temperature so you can actually spread it! Unlike the other fine dining place Cafe Central which no matter how you cut it has terrible food....it only survives because of the cachet. I have been there about 10 times in the last 4 years and had a terrible experience everytime....why did I go there you ask...thrice hoping that it would be good again....taken there the other 7 times).
Time for the second course: we shared the goat cheese gnochi they were perfectly cooked and tasted good, but at around $2 a piece..they were a little pricey. Yes. yes it was a second course...so quantities should be smaller...but still.
Main course: my wife who is a pescatarian (eats fish, shrimp, lobster etc.) could not find anything that she could actually eat or wanted to eat. There was a sea bass (Chilean toothfish on the menu)but she did not care for the whole combination. Every other fish dish had some kind of meat component. For example: something like pan seared monkfish with brown butter sauce...served with an oxtail potato cake or something like that. We asked the waitress if we could subsititute one of the sides OR take it off but we were told that was not possible since that would make the chef unhappy. We of course must keep the chef happy (not the customers)by any means so my wife chose to just not have an entree. I ordered something that sounded like a deconstructed clam chowder: seared red snapper served over mashed potatoes and a light cream broth. This dish looked great and smelled great. The red snapper was cooked perfectly with crispy skin and was cooked through yet beautifully moist. The clams were again pefectly poached..the problem was the broth. This was extremely salty and again when I pointed that out to the waitress, we were told very sympathetically "sorry about that...someone else was complaining about that"..but no offer to fix it. So at this point we had some great dishes, some not so great dishes okay service and great wine. One thing that is apparent is that the basic quality of the ingredients is great and they do know how to cook...they do have seasoning problems (this was a problem the next two times we went too). Now the big redeeming thing was the manager who was asking people about their evenings fixed the issue with my dish and everthing instantly and apologized for the issues too and even comped us our dessert. The desserts here are absolutely fabulous. They are the right size (on the smaller size rather than the behemoth desserts you see nowadays)and they are so fabulous that you are sated with 3 bites. We had a gingerbread pudding with a white tea ice-cream and a drizzle of a ginger syrup. A great ending to a good meal...no not incredible by any means but solid good. This is why they get 3 starts instead of 4 OR 5.
At any rate this place is a must go now and more so if they get their things right (they have great burgers for lunch..but serve them on crappy store bought buns which fall apart). This is the only high end restaurant in El Paso worth going to. They do have a nice happy hour and the lounge is nice to hang out in.

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