My spouse and I dined at Hook Seafood & Grille on a Saturday evening in early October 2015 with two family members. Hook occupies the space previously used by the Cosmopolitan restaurant, which closed in March 2015 (Hook opened in July 2015). The restaurant is open for lunch on weekdays, Sunday brunch, and dinner Tuesdays through Saturdays (closed Sundays and Mondays). They accept reservations by telephone and using the Open Table reservation system. Parking is available in the ArtsWalk lot next door (signs read “permit parking only”, but restaurant staff directed us to park there. (Hook does not offer valet parking as its predecessor Cosmopolitan did.)
The main
street-level dining room features a slightly nautical theme, but retains the
original Cosmopolitan footprint with its high ceilings and large windows in the
dining room, which are now accented with striped curtain valances, and
coordinating pillows are found on some booth seats. The iconic Hess’s
chandelier still hangs in the restaurant, and the lighted “wall” waterfall from
the Cosmopolitan also remains. Oddly and inexplicably, the restaurant had some
issues with power/electricity on the night that we dined, with lighting being
turned on and off intermittently in different sections of the main dining room.
Restrooms are still located on the second floor, which is accessible both by an
elevator and by the grand staircase. Additional dining is located on the second
floor, but it went unused on the evening that we dined.
Our group of four
shared the calamari as an appetizer, and we also enjoyed the complimentary
bread basket provided by the restaurant. For our entrees, we ordered fish and
chips and lobster roll as two lower-priced options (both in the $15+ range),
along with two true entrees of a broiled combination seafood platter (with
scallops, shrimp, cod, and a crabcake) and a fish dish. Dessert far outshined
the rest of the meal in terms of creativity and presentation; called “peanut
butter and jelly”, it had three or four components (tiny “sandwich” that looked
more like a filled macaron, grape gelee squares, a tiny glass of “milk” (panna
cotta), all accented by concord grapes.
Service was not
good on the night that we visited; however, our server was one who previously
provided decent service to us at the Cosmopolitan, so perhaps it was just an
off night.
We will probably
give Hook another try for lunch sometime; hopefully our next experience will be
more successful than our last.
