From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

ZED451 / Boca Raton

March 6 2009

201 Plaza Real, Mizner Park, Boca Raton

561-393-3451

zed451.com

Cuisine: American

Cost: expensive

Hours: dinner daily, lunch Monday-Saturday, brunch Sunday

Reservations: yes

Credit cards: AE, DC, D, MC, V

Bar: full service

Sound level: loud

Outside smoking: yes

For kids: high chairs, boosters (dinner free for 6 and younger and half price for 7-12)

Wheelchair accessible: yes

First impression: You've heard of big box retailers? This is a big box restaurant spread over 14,000-square-feet with seating for more than 400.

Ambience: Slick. If you've dined at any of the big Las Vegas restaurants in the last few years, the contemporary decor here will feel familiar. Soaring ceilings, dark wooden floors, glass walls and the sometimes too-loud music give ZED451 a nightclub feel.

The concept: Veterans of Brazilian churrascarias and Argentine steakhouses will feel right at home here. Guests start at the buffet-style Harvest Tables where you'll find soups, salads, vegetable dishes, bread and charcuterie. Protein — beef, chicken, fish, sausage and duck, the night I dined here — is brought to your table and sliced to order. Diners place stones beside their plates to indicate they want more protein. (At lunchtime, diners order from a regular menu.)

The price: $55 per person or $33 for Harvest Tables only. Prices are lower for Sunday brunch.

Starters: There are a little more than one dozen cold items on the Harvest Tables. Most are unremarkable salads or marinated vegetables and fruits. We had to look hard for a plate of iceberg lettuce with blue cheese dressing that wasn't turning brown. Most dishes are accompanied by a sauce or dressing that you spoon from tiny containers on to your plate. There was potato salad, baby zucchini, plums, pears and cheese-filled ravioli. Lentil soup tasted more like pea soup.

Entree excellence: Among the protein brought to us was Moroccan chicken, an overly-spicy and dry chicken breast. Bottom sirloin was tough and chewy. Rib eye wasn't much better. Atlantic salmon was over seasoned with black pepper. Sausage was served with a too-sweet mustard horseradish sauce.

Side issues: All diners receive cheesy biscuits, creamed spinach and mashed potatoes.

Sweet!: Individual Key lime pie ($10) was quite good.

Service: Great reservationist who asks if we're celebrating anything special. But missing is the high level of interaction between servers and diners required with this style of eating. Hostesses seemed awkward. Timing was off. We were asked more than once by the protein-delivering chefs if we were "full." But we'd only just begun.

—John Tanasychuk