This was our first time eating out in 16+ months, and thus felt like an adventure. Sole was an old stand-by for significant occasions, not cheap, but good service and outstanding food. It appears they are still working on the last two.
The safety aspect...of dining out is well looked after. There is a required pre-admission screening questionnaire that can be filed out on paper, with single-use gold pencils, and online form accessed either by URL or a QR code. Reservations are required, and one can choose indoor or outdoor seating, some of the latter being either under an awning or umbrellas. Some of the outdoor area is covered by propane heaters. They have developed an ingenious system to let wait staff know that tables have been sanitized after previous customers have left - when we got to our table their was a large metal washer on it, which our waiter picked up when she first came to the table; when we asked she explained that the cleaners put a washer on a table after it had been thoroughly sanitized to let the wait staff know that, and the wait staff then removed it and no one later would be placed at that table until it again had a washer on it. Clever!
For the number of people dining, there was adequate wait staff, and yet service was slow, it taking nearly 10 minutes for our beverage orders to arrive, and a further 20 minutes for our first course. Our mains did not arrive until nearly 75 minutes after our arrival. I suspect they must have been short-staffed in the kitchen, because there seemed to be no other reason for the delays.
The presentation of food was up to the old Sole standard, attractively plated. Some of the combinations of flavours were unusual, also something the pre-pandemic Sole was know for. Some worked, others didn't. I had mussels in a sauce based on cream and grained mustard- unusual but it worked. On the other hand, one would expect that Jaegerschnitzel would be in a cream sauce involving mushrooms, but alas no. The butter poached asparagus, bitter greens, lemon garlic & anchovy vinaigrette, crisp capers were tasty enough, but the schnitzel, without any sauce was dry, and where it was thin, overcooked and tough. And again the odd flavour combination, a soft-poached egg buried underneath the greens did nothing to resolve the dryness nor did it improve the flavour. Also, one would expect a restaurant offering several seafood choices, including shrimp that can be added to any other main or salad might have some seafood sauce on hand, but Sole didn't. Our waiter assured us this would be corrected in future. Desserts were limited in umber; the creme brulee was good, but ordinary, and the tiramisu was tasty, but a bit soggy. In short, while there was nothing "wrong" with the food, it wasn't up to the standards we expected from this formerly (and we hope again in the future) fine restaurant.
All that said, the atmosphere is outstanding as it had been, and despite the slowness, the wait staff was friendly, and did their best to make this a good evening.More