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| - My dad came to town for a visit and when he's in town I always take the opportunity to try a restaurant usually out of my price range. For this visit I booked a reservation at Tarbell's and was excited to head there for a nice dinner. We were not disappointed! We arrived and were promptly seated. While perusing the menu we each ordered a gin martini; with a twist for me and dirty for my dad. They were both very good, but not outstanding. A group next to us ordered a variety of things on the appetizer menu and made the task of choosing one quite difficult, but we decided to go with the pommes frites. It's probably blasphemy to say that these reminded me of Steak and Shake fries, but they did, only 10x better. Somehow they are able to keep these thin fries piping hot for more than 2 minutes. We also shared the soup of the day, tomato bisque, and the bacon candy salad, both of which were delightful. For our entrees my Dad went with the Scotch beef and I picked salmon. We thought both were good, but the Scotch beef was the winner. For dessert it was again the table next to us who ordered a variety and made it difficult to pick, but we went with the bread pudding. I like bread pudding and this was good, but not great.
Overall, we enjoyed this dinner very much. It isn't very often that we go all out and indulge ourselves and Tarbell's was a good choice to do so. The service was well-timed and we never felt rushed. The waitress did a good job of checking up, but not being overly attentive. There are quite a few places to spend a nice evening in Phoenix and this is a good choice, but I wouldn't be clamoring to come back, either. I do like that Tarbell's is a nice change of pace from most of the upscale restaurants in town that specialize in steak.
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