There is something incredibly unnerving about 50 Plates. We’re all for nostalgia and down-home cooking and county-fair food made sophisticated, but when you start talking about grandmothers and Route 66 while looking exactly like a West Elm, you lose us.

It still manages to feel comfortable, despite the glaring white tables, the overly strategic lighting, and the pricey arrangements that our own grandmothers would have clucked their tongues at as “wasteful, and ugly besides.” In other words, it’s totally at home in the too-cool Pearl, but not reflective of anyone’s childhood homes. The bar tends to be more successful in fitting into its trendy, chic design; the bartenders are astute and seem to have fun making the drinks, so people tend to have fun drinking them.

The bar is also a great place to spend happy hour, with so many whimsical sliders (who doesn’t love a whimsical slider?) on the menu. They sure do get the blood pumping when you first order them: a fried-chicken-and-waffles slider? A Carolina pulled pork version for $2.50? Kobe, Tillamook cheddar, and tomato jam?

But if everything sounds like the perfect marriage of sentimental flavors in exciting new forms (much like we imagine the business plan for 50 Plates sounded), that’s because it is merely that: a sound bite. There is no sense of a great chef behind the scenes, just concepts and gimmicks.

A “Sam Ward,” for instance, named for what the menu deems “New York’s first ‘foodie’,” has an alluring-sounding sherry cream and roasted mushroom sauce over challah toast (funny, Sam doesn’t look Jewish), but on the palate, it comes off like undersalted cream of mushroom soup over eggy toast. Sam would never advocate this kind of blandness. Fries are good, crispy, and hand cut, with a homemade ketchup that is wonderfully light and fresh and not overly sweet and salty like the bottled stuff. But when a menu this large and this titillating only sees a handful of dishes through to delicious fruition, we have to call its bluff.