Soluna Cocina + Tequila Bar

Elkridge, Maryland

There are restaurants that disappoint you, and then there are restaurants that rob you. Soluna Cocina + Tequila Bar in Elkridge robbed me of a rare solo night out, robbed me of what was once a genuinely transcendent ceviche, and very nearly robbed me of my will to ever sit at a bar again. I want the two hours back. What I cannot get back is the faith I once had in this place, and that is the part that stings.

Let me be fair, because I was raised right. When Soluna first opened, I went three times in quick succession. There were the expected growing pains, missing menu items, management finding its footing. Fine. They got the pass new restaurants deserve. What kept me coming back was the ceviche, a dish so good that Hemingway would have written the novel about it rather than the old man and the sea. I am not being hyperbolic. That ceviche was a reason to exist.

So when I settled onto my bar stool tonight, a year removed from my last visit, I ordered with confidence. A jalapeño margarita and the ceviche.

The room was still lively and packed and beautiful in that obligatory yuppie Latin watering hole way that Soluna has always done well. The menu still shows ambition, and when a place puts duck confit on the menu, it is telling you it knows how to cook. I believed them. I was wrong.

The fish itself had been handled correctly. I'll say that much. Properly cut, properly timed, nothing rubbery, nothing raw where it shouldn't be. A line cook somewhere back there knew the mechanics. But mechanics and cooking are not the same thing, and what arrived in that oversized wine glass proved it. There was no lime. No acid to speak of at all, which for a ceviche is like serving a symphony with the strings removed and calling it complete.

No undercurrent of freshness, no brightness, nothing that made the dish taste like it came from a kitchen with a pulse. It was seasoned the way a spreadsheet seasons things. Correct on paper. Dead on the tongue. I have had ceviche assembled by people who had clearly never left Ohio, and even that had more love than this.

The margarita arrived next, ordered as jalapeño, delivered as something else entirely. Whatever heat the jalapeño was meant to contribute had been lost somewhere between the bottle and the glass, replaced by a flat, chalky sweetness that had no business anywhere near tequila. And the tequila itself tasted like it had been rescued from the very bottom shelf, the dusty end of the row reserved for bottles nobody wants to be seen buying, let alone drinking. Agave is a beautiful plant. It deserves better representation than this. What I was handed wasn't a jalapeño margarita so much as a rumor of one, assembled from a premix bottle by someone who had never actually tasted the drink they were making.

The bartender who'd made the drink, if "made" is the right word for pouring a premix, set it down and vanished. Not busy-vanished. Gone-for-good vanished. She never reappeared for the rest of the night.

Enter the main bartender, who at least noticed when I pushed the ceviche away. He asked what was wrong with it. I told him, in detail, exactly what was wrong with it. He said nothing back. No follow-up, no apology, no offer to fix it, no suggestion of something else. He simply walked away and never returned. Never checked on me again. Never asked if I wanted anything else. Never even told me to get lost, which at that point would have at least been an acknowledgment that I existed. He just stopped seeing me. I sat there trying to flag someone down to pay my bill and leave, and got the same nothing in response.

I have enough integrity in me that even after being ignored into invisibility, I didn't just walk out the door. I stopped at the hostess stand on my way out, asked for a manager, and told her plainly that I would gladly pay for everything I'd been served. I just wanted her to know how disgusting the entire experience had been.

The manager, when I finally reached her, offered exactly what you'd expect from someone who has processed this exact conversation many times before. A nod. No charge. A wave toward the door, as if that settled it. It didn't.

I'll say this plainly. I shower regularly. My clothes are pressed and presentable. I'm no Brad Pitt, but small children don't run screaming at the sight of me either. So I have to wonder what it was, exactly, that made an entire staff decide I didn't warrant basic acknowledgment on a night when all I wanted was a drink, a plate of something good, and a little conversation with the room. I don't have an answer. What I do have is a decision. I won't be back inside Soluna Cocina + Tequila Bar until the ownership changes hands, which, given the caliber of food and service on display that night, could happen at any moment.

“I’ve cooked for the best. Mediocre isn’t going to cut it”