Salmon Dillano's creamy dill sauce had lots of flavor. Other dishes didn't hold up. Shrimp Miguel, an appetizer of shrimp simmered in sherry cream sauce with basil and mushrooms and served in a bread bowl, looked terrific. But we couldn't taste the basil or the sherry and the dish needed salt. The lightly seasoned chicken salad turned out to be hardly seasoned.
Service is attentive without being obtrusive.
The d cor is straightforward, yet there's been some attempt to soften the atmosphere by using low lights and small vases of white flowers on the tiled tables. But the musician who thought he could cover everyone from Bob Seger to Brian Setzer reminded us of how close the dining room was to the bar. So did the smoke. Even though we didn't notice the smell while we were eating in the nonsmoking area, our clothes reeked of cigarettes long after we'd left. Shacks has the potential to succeed as a restaurant as well as a pub.