I Love Creativity....but not with Surprises

A friend from Rhode Island was coming to visit for a few days and I hooked up with a local pal to make dinner plans in Nashville.  A few drinks and dinner then a tour of the Broadway honkey tonks for live music was the game plan.  Reservations were suggested at Sambuca's and at 8:30 we were there.  Interesting decor and ambiance but my first impression was a throwback to the 1980s:  Brass, ferns and countless yuppies throwing around big bucks for mediocre food. As I trust my Tennessee  friend's judgment emphatically, I hid my frown of concern but for a while I felt out of place not wearing a three piece suit with a pinky ring and pretending to be a rich investment banker. Sambuca's has rebranded the 1980's theme as "Sensually Sophisticated" and the live music and some wonderful fusion jazz was indeed welcome. The waiter was reasonably knowledgeable with enough pretentiousness to border on unearned snobbery--but again think the 80's---people liked that.  His training perhaps was obtained at a local Meat and Three.  More on him later. Sambuca's menu is that of an an eclectic steakhouse with a couple of trendy and certainly mislabeled menu items.  For instance "deconstructed sushi " as an appetizer.  The concept of deconstructed food is appalling in my opinion but more importantly isn't "deconstructed sushi," nothing more than sashimi?? Enough bastardization of accepted nomenclature, in my opinion. I noticed the Blackened Red Snapper Etouffee on the menu and decided to inquire.  Upon questioning, the waiter assured me the Snapper was fresh.  I allowed him to lie to me outright, and being in a sporting mood and wanting to see how far he would go to sell a piece of fish, I asked him to please check.  A few minutes later he dutifully returned informing me that the Snapper was fresh and recently caught out of the Gulf. Well, I reasoned, another lie as the Gulf's Red Snapper season has been closed since August 1.  OK they were going with it being blackened and in an Etouffee, and I thought,  it would be fine even if it was frozen, so there I went. Now you're right I didn't neglect the possibility of farm raised redfish-----but they offered Red Snapper not Redfish and the former are not farm raised, so I was confident I was being served frozen fish.  Just to let him know I was somehow confident that the fish was frozen, I asked if they even owned a freezer.  We both knew the answer.

At any rate, the mislabeling part comes from the use of the term "Etouffee."  The dish, although marginally passable, was served with a side of dirty rice and spinach. The fish was a fairly large filet with an unidentifiable sauce of some sort.  Although the provenance of this vitreous liquid was unclear, I was confident it did not involve a roux.  Nor did I ever see what appeared to be a "disassembled" Etouffee: A couple of shrimp, a lump or two of crabmeat and fish---with the sauce separated from its constituent components. At a minimum, they should have called it something other than an Etouffee. An "Etouffee Variant" perhaps? I hate creativity with surprises.