Slate
Slate is a new restaurant that has opened on Sand Lake Road’s Restaurant Row, and I’m not sure why.
It’s a lovely place, and the food is good, but when I visited shortly after it opened as a guest at a media dinner, I found myself looking for a thematic clue, something on the menu, for instance, that tells the guest “This is our specialty” or “This is what is going to make you want to come back again and again.” Unfortunately, I never found it.
Even the restaurant’s name is a misleading misnomer, for if there is a scrap of slate anywhere in the decor, I did not see it. Copper, yes. And exposed brick, white tile, steel, elements of fire, both functional and decorative, too. But no slate.
It is, however, a beautiful restaurant, which is what one would expect from the same people who brought us Luma on Park and Prato. But it’s also because of that pedigree that one should expect more logic here.