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Tag: restaurant

  • Bonefish Grill (Marlton, NJ) — Restaurant Review

    Bonefish Grill (Marlton, NJ) — Restaurant Review

    Bonefish Grill
    bonefishgrill.com
    500 Route 73 North
    Marlton, NJ 08053 (map)    		 Survey Says: Amazing!

    It is RARE when I rave about a restaurant (high standards, you know how it is), so perk up your ears (eyes?) because here’s one such occasion.

    I came down to New Jersey (from Boston, where I live) to be there for my parents as they took the final step towards becoming American citizens. Now we are one big happy gringo family (thank you thank you, we are excited, too). Such a momentous occasion deserved a nice dinner celebration. And when I say “nice” I mean the kind of “nice” when people say “I’m going to take her to a nice restaurant.” Yeah, THAT kind of nice.

    The Bonefish Grill was everything we hoped for and more. I must say that I was abit skeptical at first. I mean, this is a fish restaurant and I am mostly a meat lover. One look at the menu, and I thought “well, this will do, I guess.” The entire experience ended up being SO divine that I decided to not only rate my own dinner, but also my parents and grandmother’s dinner, the decor and the extra stuff (extra stuff? what could that be? keep reading!). Ready? Set. Go!

    Décor:

    Romantic décor
    Romantic décor
    The place looks like what a nice restaurant looks like. I’m sorry, I know I am overusing that word. Let’s find another one. Fancy? Elegant? Superb? Ooh, I like that one. The décor was superb. The lighting was dim, perfect for a romantic evening (or for any other evening that you wanted to make extra special). The elegant metal fish on the back wall almost made you forget that there was a whole section on the other side of the restaurant that had booths in it (the implication being that booths do not equal fancy, but it did not matter from where we were sitting).

    Bread with pesto
    Bread with pesto
    The Bread
    I’m not going to say this was the best bread I’ve ever had, but I can’t say it’s the worst (for a pretty bad review of bread, see my Rosie O’Grady’s review). It was actually on the “better” side. The pesto dip was definitely a unique twist on the popular appetizer (delicious, too!). I won’t rave, but it gets my thumbs up.

     

    Rainbow Trout
    Rainbow Trout
    Mom’s dish: Rainbow Trout $17.30
    Sides: grilled asparagus, and vegetable of the day: spaghetti squash with honey and ginger glaze and a bit of brown sugar topping.
    My mother’s assessment: “Can’t go wrong with trout… or asparagus!”
    I tried it myself off her plate, and I thought it was a bit… “blocky.” It was quite dense, not very tender. This might be a quality of trout rather than Bonefish’s cooking, so I’ll leave that with you.
    As for the vegetable of the day, every single one of us left it on our plates. I am a huge fan of sweetened squash, so I was surprised. It was just not as delicious as butternut squash with maple syrup, which I would consider to be spaghetti-squash-with-honey-and-ginger-glaze’s better-looking younger sister. Just didn’t compare.

     

    Chilean Sea Bass
    Chilean Sea Bass
    Dad’s dish: Chilean Sea Bass 6oz $23.90
    Sauce: Mango salsa | Sides: Veg medley | App: House Caesar
    My father’s assessment: “I should have gone with a different sauce. This is good for trout, but not sea bass.”
    I did get a chance to try the salad, and it was alright. Not bad, but not anything to write a blog post about.

     

    Steak topped with Lobster Thermidor
    Steak topped with Lobster Thermidor
    Grandma’s dish: (Special) Steak topped with Lobster Thermidor $16.90
    Description from the website: “A passionate tale of forbidden love – so steamy, so indulgent, that it can only be expressed with a 6 oz wood-grilled sirloin and sweet lobster, lump crab, a velvety sauce with a hint of sherry, and garlic whipped potatoes. Or maybe it was a filet for +$6? Either way.”
    My grandmother’s assessment: “the lobster was a joke, but good overall.” That’s translated from Spanish, so what she meant was that it wasn’t nearly enough. I guess she was expecting a whole lobster! She seemed to like it, though.

     

    Sea Scallops and Shrimp
    Sea Scallops and Shrimp
    ina’s dish: Sea Scallops and Shrimp $17.30
    Sauce: Lemon Butter | Sides: Garlic Whipped Potatoes and vegetable of the day
    I am going to tell you right now: out of all the dishes in front of me that night, I did not envy anybody else’s choice over mine at ALL. I definitely got the best of them all. The shrimp was cooked to perfection. You know how frozen shrimp is chewy when you warm it up? Not so here! Perfect scallops, perfect shrimp, and I am VERY HAPPY to have gone with the lemon butter sauce. I was thinking of mango, but I’m glad I changed my mind. Come to think of it, if I ever went back to the Bonefish Grill, I would probably get the same thing.
    Still, did not eat the spaghetti squash.

    Warm chocolate brownie
    Warm chocolate brownie
    Dessert: Warm chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce
    You know how brownies are sometimes plagued by those pesky nuts? Well, not so here! The nuts were ON TOP of the brownie! Which means that I was able to enjoy every single bite. The brownie was warm, and it had a thing layer of chocolate topping (it was too soft to be frosting, but too hard to just be syrup). The entire thing was just amazing.

    Opinionated Coaster
    Opinionated Coaster
    The “extra” stuff:
    Can you believe this super duper fancy place had hashtags for you to share your experience on twitter??? Oh yeah, I was ALL over that.

    “#bfgcoasters: if you this a Bonefish Grill Coaster, what would you say?” My tweet:

    #tuesdaytales: use it to rave about your awesome experience with the Tuesday specials at the restaurant.My tweet:

    That was our unbelievable experience at the Bonefish Grill. And now, for the truly tacky finale, brought to you by the never-wasters, my mother and grandmother:

    Tacky ending
    Tacky ending

    The End.

    ina

  • Rosie O’Grady’s (New York City) — Restaurant Review

    Rosie O’Grady’s (New York City) — Restaurant Review

    Rosie O’Grady’s
    rosieogradys.com
    800 7th Avenue
    (7th Ave & 52nd St)
    New York, NY 10019 (map)    		 Survey Says: High price for ‘eh’ quality

    ina in NYC 2013
    ina in NYC 2013
    My parents, my grandmother, and I were in New York City for just enough time to visit a friend, have lunch and go back home to southern New Jersey (suburb of Philadelphia, where my folks live). As the foreigners/immigrants we are, it would have been a complete waste to have been in New York City without seeing Times Square. It would have been like… heck, there is no good analogy for this: it would have been like being in New York City and NOT seeing Times Square!

    So, after much Google searching for restaurants near the iconic tourist location, we settled on a restaurant called Rosie O’Grady’s in the corner of 7th Avenue and 52nd Street.

    Rosie’s is an irish pub that is up a level from a Molly Malone’s. This is the Target to Molly Malone’s Wal-mart. It has a full menu (including filet mignon), and a pub atmosphere. We had high hopes.

    I ordered the filet mignon (I must confess my Google search centered around “steak”), while my parents ordered fish. Here’s the low down of our experience:

    1. The bread was cold and stale (or at the very least you could tell it had been sitting out all day), and the butter was also cold.
    2. The shrimp cocktail appetizer tasted exactly like the precooked frozen shrimp I buy at the store and then warm up at home. You can tell shrimp came from frozen because they are chewy, like octopus.
    3. The filet mignon was undercooked despite my having ordered it medium, but I decided to overlook this considering I was having my steak.
    4. The presentation left much to be desired. My meal was $30 for the steak alone, and I was expecting a presentation deserving of the extra cash.
    5. The first limonade the waiter brought for me had a fruit fly floating in it (I would have said swimming, but I’m pretty sure the darn thing was dead)
    6. Due to this incident, the waiter (Marco, from Ecuador, very nice) decided to spot us dessert. We got a free apple pie (which looked like it had been made last week) with ice cream. It did not hit the spot, I must say.

    In the end, I don’t think I would go back. Normally I would just say this on principle alone, it is New York City after all and it deserves to be explored. But this time I must say my reasons are reduced to a simple word: “quality.”

    Also, let me leave you with a bit of an anecdote. On our way out, I noticed that the hostess was having her lunch (or early dinner?) right by the main entrance. I figured if she wanted privacy she would have eaten all the way in the back (wrong assumption), and I decided to be rude and interrupt her meal (please note that I do know -NOW- that this is the WRONG thing to do to someone who probably has the crappiest job in the world). You see, the curiosity hit me when I saw her eating food from the restaurant, and I wanted to ask her what her favorite dish was. So I did (again, I’m SORRY).

    She immediately got up, without looking at me, grabbed a menu, and pointed at the Lobster Ravioli. I smiled a lot and thanked her (and apologized) profusely, but she looked like she was trying to mask a level of annoyance never seen before. She never spoke a word. I immediately felt bad and had a thought: she probably gets bothered by foreigners/tourists ALL THE TIME. What can I say, the language barrier alone makes it difficult to communicate, let alone cultural differences. This woman was ON HER BREAK, and this stupidly culturally-inept person (with an accent, mind you) was interruption her break to ask her a completly inane question that did not matter at all because that person (me) had already decided never to come back to this restaurant again.

    And so ends my restaurant tales of New York City.

    ina