New Fort Collins Restaurant — Offers Cool Table Fun

New restaurant in town, sign me up. While shopping in Fort Collins Monday, my Natasha asked to go to dinner. We ended up at a new restaurant with cool table fun.

Although this may seem more like a commercial for ketchup, it's really meant to show how cool this is and kudos to The Laboratory for putting them out there.On the table was this bottle of ketchup, how cool is that? We didn't get our ketchup until our food came and didn't get to actually try this, but what an awesome concept.

The restaurant looks a little sparse when you walk in, but the atmosphere is nice and the open floor/patio concept is a success.

Our server came to the table as soon as we were sat and we had our water and drinks within 3 minutes. We were approached by another employee who told us that they were understaffed and if we needed anything to let him know, also mentioning our server was new.  We appreciated the gesture, but you'd be hard pressed to get faster service at fully staffed, well established restaurants in town.

We started with the fried pickle chips and homemade ranch, they looked like something that you would cook at home, light breading, a little greasy, but very good. And the ranch was refreshing, tasty and light.

The server's 'new' status really didn't affect us negatively at all, she was quick and nice. The only drag time was waiting for a late addition to our order, but she was only one of three, that we saw, servers/employees in the place. There were about 30 diners in the place, and she was making alcoholic drinks for the other servers.

For dinner at the Laboratory we each had something a different, we ordered the Smoked Mozzarella Mac and Cheese, it was tossed with tomatoes, bacon and chives. On a scale of 1-10, it scored a 2. The smokey flavor was incredibly loud (but hey if you love that, it would likely score higher for you) and the noodles were slightly over cooked. The original Mac and Cheese was more on level of amazing, but misses a 10 score as it too had over cooked noodles. We also tried the grilled cheese sandwiches, the Italian and the Four cheese. The Italian was a hit and would likely please even a picky palate. The Four Cheese grilled cheese was loaded with cheese no doubt, but the Gruyere ruled the flavors, funny, initially the thought was that the goat cheese would still the show, but that was not the case, I really only tasted the Gruyere. The Four Cheese sandwich came with a tomato and basil dipping sauce and it was definitely a 10. The sandwich was a bit dull, perfectly toasted on one side, so so on the other side, the sourdough bread was cut thick and didn't have much flavor, but that could be the Gruyere again.

The Laboratory is a good fit for midtown Fort Collins and will be a great new hang out. They haven't been open too terribly long and will likely work out the few little kinks. They have, in this diners opinion, nailed the sauces, the pickles the Classic Mac and Cheese (once you have the sauce down, the noodle issue is just a little tweaking, so tired of pasted and bland mac and cheese that a lot of area places offer) and some of the sandwiches.

Thank you for a good experience and for bringing something new and refreshing to Fort Collins.