Hub 51 2010-06-01

The dining experience at a place like Hub 51 would be perfectly acceptable if it were consistently better than average. It’s a bar. But they’ve been striving for 4-stars and serving up anywhere from 1 to 3. Today was 3.

Many patrons would agree that unless the price of dinner is about a Subway value meal, consistency is a greater prize than roller-coaster, no matter how high the lumber soars. And Hub 51 has been the ultimate in service bipolarity. One day you might get the best that a bar can offer and another you’ll have to stand up and pound your chest to get attention. One day you’ll get a delightful chicken breast thick and juicy and tomorrow something grade-C edible. I know that there are growing pains. Restaurants, like teenagers, go through a best-forgotten awkward phase where the limbs don’t seem to fit the torso, the voice cracks and the occasional facial blemish escapes the cover-up. This is true of all F&B, especially a space of Hub 51’s size. Only I would have expected the progeny of Melman’s clan to keep the awkward to a minimum. They didn’t. Did sonny shrug off his Dad’s immortal coil to prove he was his own man? If so, we have a classic exhibit in the triumph of pride over experience. One can only wonder how many times Daddy tried to say that service staff’s abilities are NOT inversely proportional to skirt-length.

But whatdoiknow. The place seems to be packed most evenings and even most afternoons at lunchtime. Its price-point is adequate for its location and its food is better (mostly) than Rockit, Howl or Rock Bottom. I only wish they’d have distilled 30 years of daddy’s know-how since they so clearly make mistakes that even Food Life has long ago corrected. If you’re going to be Einstein’s kid, either take advice or go do patent-clerking. You’ll never stand outside the shadow so you might as well be shrewd about it.