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| - A party of 5 descended upon the restaurant one breezy, very cool summer evening.
My first impression, great heated patio on the lower floor as well as on the second floor. Instead of the usual heat shades they utilized open concept gas fireplaces. The interiors utilized a lot of wood in the decor, giving it a very cottage tavern feeling. It reminded me of a more brighter Joeys/Moxies/Milestones without the lounge atmosphere that most are accustomed to.
We had the rack of ribs, a chicken caesar salad, steaks one striploin and one filet mignon, and a "chop and pop" salad.
Food surprisingly took awhile to arrive, despite the restaurant not being overly busy for a Friday evening. We had to remind our server past the 30 minutes mark since placing our order that we had not received anything yet. He apologized for the delay and as well as the manager came along and passed us his sympathies. He indicated it would be exactly one minute from now that we would receive our food. That minute however, became another 5 minutes. A total of 35 minutes from placing our order the food being served...
Ribs were very saucy with plenty of BBQ sauce on top, but flavorful and smoky. Just the way I like it. The beans came with a bit of pull pork, very delicious. Where it fails is the sad attempt at coleslaw. It was very bland and not memorable, it was hardly pickled and it consisted of what I think was salad dressing over diced carrot strips?
As for the steaks, the striploin came medium well when it was asked for medium rare. We had to send it back. It would be another 10 minutes before we received a properly cooked striploin. My friend was a bit upset as he was very hungry, and he had to wait even longer now for his food.
The filet mignon however was cooked perfectly rare as it was asked. The chicken in the Caesar salad was dry and disappointing. For the $5 extra we expected better. The salad by itself was great though, but it would be very hard to screw up a Caesar. Lastly, the "pop and chop" salad while interesting on paper, was stale in its ingredients. Particularly the popcorn that was used as well as the smoked salmon. My friend who ordered it was not impressed.
On a personal side, their scotch whisky selection was pretty good, and surprised me. They had a chance to impress me when I wanted to order a dram of The Highlander 12 year, had it still been in stock. Disappointed, I fell back to my usual Glenfiddich and picked out the 18 year instead.
Overall, a mix of positives and negatives prevents me from giving this place more than a satisfactory review. It would have been nice to receive a little bit more compensation in the form of a complimentary dessert or a 10% off for the long time it took for our food to arrive, and the improperly cooked steak. Things that mind you, we had brought to the restaurant's attention.
I wouldn't go out of my way to come back to this particular location, but I hear that they have another location down on Corus Quay with a fantastic patio that faces the lake.. I may give Against The Grain another try if its convenient.
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