You’ve got to be a brave chef to put tongue on the menu. And it is offered here in flying colors. Flood’s chef/owner Greg Mitchell has proven his mettle in many ways, especially at the Palace Diner where he and co-owner and chef Chad Conley (of Rose Foods bagel-Jewish deli fame) have made tuna melts and flapjacks an art of the meal.
But at Flood’s, recently opened in the Francis Hotel as an independent restaurant (it has its own entrance apart from the hotel but no relationship to the functionality of the building as a 15-room inn), the tongue in question stands brazenly apart among less rarefied entrees. Unless you consider chicken schnitzel rarefied. That too is on the menu and is as large as the breast from a condor, covering a platter- size plate with no space to spare.
The main dining room with banquettes and booths and the ante room with several tables
More to the point, the menu is an odd compilation offering a list of dishes under the heading of Dinner such as cheese toast, salad, clam and mussel toast among the four lone entrée-style dishes –seared beef tongue, homemade pork sausage, whole roasted mackerel and chicken schnitzel. These are served unadorned. If you want a side, they’re separately listed: grilled summer squash, charred broccoli, marinated beans and fries.
