The Crimson Sparrow - City of Hudson

The food was extraordinary and the service was exceptional. Truly special.

Fabulous, as always! Every morsel was delicious! The outside garden is gorgeous, service great. Lots of courses on this amazing tasting menu, interesting, delicious wine sake pairings. Well worth the price.

There was nothing special about this restaurant. The food was mostly below average, one or two good courses, tiny tiny morsel of tuna and scallop, pureed cauliflower that had no taste, fried potato, endive with a nondescript vegetarian filling, maitake mushrooms was decent but not wow, only decent thing was the hamachi and sunchoke puree. Even dessert was below average. And there was no sake pairing. We went to Hudson to eat in this restaurant but were so disappointed.

Always fabulous. Well worth the significant price tag for truly creative food and lovely wine and sake pairings. A tasting menu that won't disappoint. Each course was better than the last. What a great way to celebrate a special occasion!

The Crimson Sparrow was a bit disappointing. Though the food was good, I feel as if the dishes missed an opportunity to rise to another level. Each plate was made of its elements and when everything was combined with one bite, it tended to be good. If you were to taste each individual element by itself, the taste was usually flat. This created a problem for me. If each element couldn't stand on its own two feet, then that could lead to potentially bad dishes. In theory, I thought it might be a risky move that could lead to something interesting, but what really ended up happening were dishes that were good to the subpar to dishes that crashed and burned. Two dishes really stuck out in my mind. The first was the butternut squash porridge with cedar nuts and black truffles. Those combination of things sound fantastic, but when I ate this dish it became a flat, chewy mess. After the first initial hit on my tongue the flavor quickly sapped away and the truffles had nothing to elevate. The other dish that created problems was the smoked duck on yukon mash with black trumpet mushroom puree and a mushroom dust. Another dish with lots of potential, but became bland tasting and mushy in texture. The smoked duck ended up tasting like cheap smoked spam. When tasting the black trumpet puree on it's own it was earthy but tasted under seasoned. Not to mention the duck breast was very chewy and not tender at all. I felt like the dishes wanted to take me on this natural journey, but it's as if the technic and style got in the way of the natural ingredients. Of the 9 course only four were good and the other five, they ranged from the subpar to bad. I'd save your money and look somewhere else.