It gives me no pleasure to slam a restaurant like Knock. Here it was, minding its own business, when our group of four bounded in, requesting its staff to seat and serve us within an hour.
The situation was this: We had tickets to the last Philly showing of Avenue Q (a hysterically vulgar puppet musical) and were surprised to find our pre-show restaurant of choice (Tria) to be full at the early bird hour of 5 pm.
As we wandered closer to the theater, with time running out, we ducked out of the cold and into Knock Restaurant & Bar. Except for the menu posted outside, we literally had no idea what to expect.
We were seated right away and ordered a bottle of wine. It was good. Then we ordered food. It was bad.
My wife ordered an appetizer salad and a flat bread starter. The salad arrived barely dressed and the flat bread was just mediocre. I ordered the “Big Grilled Chicken Salad” (why the quotes?) and was underwhelmed. The “grilled” chicken did not even pretend to be grilled; it was a skin-on roasted breast. Though juicy, the meat was ultimately tasteless once you got past the skin. The rest of the salad was ok, but also suffered from a distinct lack of dressing.
My friend got the Tempura Yellow Tail Tuna. There was so much wasabi stuffed under the tempura batter that he almost choked fire. And this is a guy who routinely downs whatever you put in front of him. About the only one who enjoyed the meal was his girlfriend, who ordered the Pan Seared Scallops. I tasted them: they were indeed a highlight.
Unfortunately folks, dinner ain’t baseball. One out of four is bad.
