Dinner at The Capital Grille: A restaurant review
A new feature for this column is a monthly restaurant review. Each month I’ll be reviewing a different dining establishment. The restaurant may not be new, but it’ll be the first time I’ve dined there. For February, it’s The Capital Grille.
Here are some basics: The Captital Grille has been around since 1990. The somewhat upscale restaurant chain has sixty-two locations in twenty-five states, the District of Columbia and Mexico City. We decided to have dinner there for two reasons: a. We had a gift certificate. b. It was a delayed Valentine’s Day dinner.
Let’s begin with the appetizers:
My dining partner began with a Caesar salad. It looked mostly like iceberg lettuce. She said it had a light dressing, but she always says that. I had a crock of French Onion soup. The waiter said it would be a huge serving and man, was he correct. Check it out:
I’ve never had a bowl of this soup this huge. While the broth was nothing out of the ordinary, there was plenty of cheese and the toasted bread inside was delicious. I didn’t finish the soup but it was a good deal for $12
On to the entrees:
She had a combination of beef tenderloin with poached lobster. It’s their version of surf and turf. I had a taste of both—kind of blah. For sixty-plus bucks, I need more than blah. I ordered the roasted chicken breasts with mushroom & parmesan risotto. The chicken you can get anywhere, so why order it at a place that is known for steak? Because I mostly wanted the risotto. As it turned out, the chicken was delicious. It was seasoned nicely, had a somewhat sweet brown gravy covering it and was so tender you could cut it with your fork. The risotto went well with it but was nothing special.
But, there was a bigger problem with the main courses; they took forever to be served. Twice we were told that our food would be out shortly, and this was without us asking. Shortly turned out to be a half-hour. Now, we weren’t in a hurry, but this is a little long of a wait, right?
It’s on to the desserts. I had checked the menu and knew what I was getting. It was time for a piece of coconut cream pie.
As you can see it has a nice presentation to it, but where is the coconut? The crust had a coconut taste to it, but that was it. All that pretty white stuff is whipped cream—a lot of whipped cream. I had been looking forward to this since checking out the menu in the afternoon, and this was more than a little disappointing. The other dessert was fresh berries in a heavy cream sauce. The berries were sweet and I liked the mix of them with the sauce. Sadly, this dish was much better than mine.
There were a few things I did like about the restaurant. Our booth was comfortable and had a nice white linen tablecloth. It was quiet enough that you could barely hear talking from other tables. Our server was excellent. He was very attentive and made sure we had water and our excellent bread basket promptly.
So let’s cut to the chase—it was a better-than-nice evening which was helped by the gift certificate that covered almost the entire price of the meals ($265 including tip). Would I go there again? Probably not. On the way home we both decided we didn’t need to go there again.
I give The Capital Grille a rating of a slight thumbs up, but if I need a place to go for a special evening, I’m most likely going elsewhere.