'Met'-Like Collapse

Like the epic collapse of baseball’s New York Mets (how befitting this parallel in names is) at the conclusion of last year’s regular season, Met Bar & Grill suffers a similar fate. The Met is unable to live up to the enormous amounts of pressure and lofty expectations set forth by its esteemed ‘big brother’ eatery just down the road along Route 9, Chestnut Hill’s more formal Metropolitan Club.

Sure, it seems like a great idea for the upscale Metropolitan Club to create a more family-oriented, informal dining destination that maintains its trendy edge. Ingenious, I might add, to expand within the bustling Natick Collection, New England’s largest mall. Like the vast expanses of the mall itself, with its unique curves, spectacular skylights, and stores both high-end (Nordstram’s, Louis Vuitton) and more pedestrian (JC Penney and McDonald’s) in nature, Met Bar & Grill at least succeeds in attracting all types of crowds through its doors. And like the throngs of customers who have traveled through the ‘great indoors’ and have finally arrived at this dining destination, our appetites are whetted.

Fashion-wise, the restaurant’s appearance is hit-and-miss. Much like the Natick Collection’s stunning architecture, Met Bar’s appeal is sleek and can be easily viewed from its entrance. Take for instance the enthralling burger bar, where about a dozen seats surround a fire-breathing vertical grill. The illuminated bar is also a plus, though on the small side for a moderately-sized eatery. The walls are splashed with a warm, yet far too dark tan-brown paint, which not only clash with the dark brown mahogany tables but make for difficult menu viewing. Walk out back behind the bar, and to our chagrin, there resides an expansive dining room with paintings of both international and domestic city landscapes plastered across the back walls. The crumbs strewn across the room’s carpeting, however, are a major blemish. I highly doubt that the Met’s intention was to replicate metropolitan dining in this level of detail.

Most unfortunately for us, Met Bar & Grill’s food does not justify the effort it takes to get there. Drinks are fine enough, though a tad high in price. My Barcelona Club, more commonly known as red sangria, comes highly recommended by our astute server, and consists of wine, Methilda poire, basil, and seasonal juices. The cocktail wins high marks for its lack of tartness and moderate sweetness, which is exacerbated by an inclusion of fresh pears. After the drinks, however, the quality of our meals rapidly plummets.

Word on the street is that it’s the signature, handmade, cooked-to-order hamburgers, creatively segmented by international and domestic geography, for which this establishment is renowned. So why is it that my exorbitantly priced $14 Tokyo burger (labeled a double burger, but small in portion), which allegedly consists of a richer cut of Kobe beef and is topped with a seemingly mouth-watering array of condiments that includes soy sauce, wasabi mayo, and pickled ginger, so utterly bland, dry and tasteless? It makes me thankful that I didn’t order one of the mini burgers, which are more prone to being overcooked. The french fries are equally dry, a tad cold, and offensively salty. A quick glance around the table reveals several downward glares and long bouts of silence from my eating companions. It is easy to ascertain that they, too, are not enamored with their selections. Had our toddlers not accompanied us to this more family-friendly environment, we would have promptly sent these back to the kitchen without hesitation.

Sadly, Met Bar and Grill does little to impress this critic. On a scale from poor to fantastic, at best I’d rate this meal as a ‘Met-za, Metza’ experience. In fact, if you're looking for a cheaper, more succulent burger alternative, less the trendy atmosphere, head over to Mr. Bartley's in student-friendly Harvard Square. They segment their burgers into celebrity names (such as the Bill Clinton), and unlike the Met's geographically named meats, Bartley's beef is the real deal.