Greetings from your resident picky eater. I know you are probably surprised to see me write a review of a steak house considering I don't like steak and normally these hoyty toyty establishments do not cater to those with a palate of a five year old.
Let me set the scene. My husband advised me he is taking me out to dinner yet would not tell me where. This alarms me because after knowing each other for nine years he still tries to surprise me by taking me to placing such as Prime Rib Loft and PF Changs. Guess where we are going?? StripSteak. Apparently, you can get a coupon on restaurants.com and so he wanted to give it a try. Panic sets in as I am worried what will I eat.. again I don't like steak and I especially don't like a steak I would have to pay $50 dollars for. My husband Michael assures me he has looked over the menu and told me they have chicken dishes and even mac & cheese.
Upon arrival we are seating and the atmosphere is quite enjoyable. Michael had advised them we are there to celebrate my birthday. It was two weeks ago but if I know my husband he was hoping to get a free dessert out of it. There was a very nice happy birthday card placed at our table which I thought was a very nice touch.
Looking at the menu.. oh dear oh dear there is ONE chicken dish.. not chicken dishes (plural) as Michael had indicated. Organic chicken it is. Michael opts for the kobe beef burger. I order a corona and Michael orders a Pepsi. (Stay tuned as the Pepsi will come into play later on in my story)
We are then provided a sample of the duck fat fries three ways with three different dipping sauces. They consisted of old bay seasoned fries, rosemary garlic type fries, and plain duck fat fries. The sauces were some mustard crème nonsense (which kind of tasted like ranch), ketchup, and truffle aioli. May I just say that the truffle aioli was amazing. Who would have thought it would win over ketchup in my mind. While enjoying our delicious fries, Michael is especially entertained in watching the people constantly stop to take pictures at their famous boob sculpture in the walkway to the Conference Center.
Meal arrives. My plate is very fancy with some onion jus drizzled around the plate and a lovely piece of chicken on top of some truffle mac & cheese. Michael wastes no time diving into his kobe burger for which I think he foodgasmed after the first bite. Now my chicken report. It was delicious!!! So moist and flavorful - it better be for $30 bucks. It had nice grill char marks on it which added to the flavor profile. The mac and cheese was good as well but alert.. there were two broccoli thingies mixed in it and a couple of baby carrots! This was not an invited guest to the party and I did not appreciate them hiding out under the chicken to surprise me. Luckily I was able to remove most of the little tree top specs and continue with my meal without incident. I decided to share my chicken with Michael.... "This is not a normal chicken!" he says as I think he was shared a spiritual moment with my chicken. He then tried one of my baby carrots and asked for another. Against my better judgment I tried the smallest of bites possible of the carrot and holy cow it didn't even taste like a carrot. It almost melted in my mouth - probably all the butter it was drenched in. I that that was the first time I eat a carrot since I was forced to stay at the table until I finished them when I was 8.
The meal has now ended. Our waiter asks if we would like to order dessert. Although the $700 glass of cognac was tempting we decided to pass. Michael was looking around wondering where is my happy birthday scoop of ice cream? We then get the bill and I think Michael about had a heart attack. Remember the Pepsi I mentioned earlier? Well apparently they are $4 - each. Michael had four of them because they are served in those skinny bar glasses that you could finish in one sip! So he paid $16 bucks for Pepsi (not even Coke!) That was $9 less then my Corona. I found it quite funny. We did however receive two small bags of some sort of chocolate drizzled caramel popcorn which I didn't get the connection but thought was nice.
To summarize, although places like this are not my cup of tea I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Be forewarned if ordering a soda that it is by the glass. If I could offer any suggestions it would be to perhaps replace the broccoli bits with bacon in the truffle mac & cheese. Even with our $50 coupon we ended up paying about $50 dollars out of pocket (thanks to Michael's soda binge) but this is a nice place for special occasion.