Beyond Disappointing

Last week, my work's Social Committee organized an event that was billed as a Comedy Night, preceded by dinner. So suffice it to say, dinner was "not" the focus. The comedy lounge we selected was the Comedy Mix, in the Century Plaza Hotel, this meant that our event included dinner at Beyond Restaurant and Lounge.
Dinner was supposed to start at 6:30, so I was worried when I arrived at 7pm. Well, I didn't have to be ~ turns out, they only took drink orders for the first half hour. Whew, so I didn't miss a thing! 
We are had set menu, where the options were a Sliced Organic Greens Salad or a Seafood Bouillabaisse with sablefish, wild salmon and mussels.  I decided to go with the Bouillabaisse. 

And there you have it...two mussels, and three dice-sized cubes of salmon, in the wateriest broth you could imagine. Simply mix a package of ketchup with a cup of water, sprinkle in green onions, and there you have it. Beyond disappointing. I tweeted this photo at the time it arrived, and I got two very appropriate responses:
1) Is that someone's leftovers and 2) Are you at a friend's place? Sadly, neither were true.
So, after I devoured my entire appetizer in about 3 minutes, I had about 45 minutes to kill because that's about how long it took for them to bring the entree. The entree options were Grilled Vegetable Penne, Roasted Half Chicken with Waffles or Fraser River Wild Sockeye Salmon Filet with potato fondant & aubergine puree. Since I didn't want to carbo-loadup with a bowl of pasta and I can't have chicken during Lent, my only option was the salmon. Since it took so long to arrive, I had high expectations for it. I don't think I've had potato fondant before, and was really curious.

And so it arrives...the yellow sauce around the plate is the most likely candidate to be "potato fondant, infused with saffron", but in reality, it's more like the lemon curd you would get on a side of lemon meringue pie. Totally weird. 

There are some steamed veggies and two (again) dice-sized cubes of potatoes. On the outside, it looked great, but when I bite into it, it wasn't cooked through. The salmon, on the other hand, didn't suffer from the same problem, no...it was very overcooked! There are only two ways to ruin salmon, overcooking and oversalting...two for two here. There was one good item on the dish, it was the aubergine puree, and I don't even like aubergine
The only way you could be satisfied with your experience here is if you really lowered your expectations. I know the restaurant is located inside the Century Plaza Hotel, and that's probably why expectations are heightened, but you've been warned.