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| - We were looking for an out of town treat, so decided to try the Three Ravens in Monticello. I'd read the menu online, but no reviews, and thought pub grub would add up to the comfort food we were after. We were there for dinner on a Wednesday night. Internet service (Frontier) was down, so they were taking cash or personal checks, but signs were posted and the bartender who greeted us also let us know.
The restaurant is right off the town square, with free parking out front. Its entrance leads into the bar with a door at the back that leads to a dining room on the right. The bar itself is a long thin room, with an actual bar counter and stools to the right and a high-top table up front. The dining room is comfortably large with plenty of seating; it hasn't changed much from previous restaurants in the space, except for Irish-themed decor (flags, a carved lyre). It's simple and clean, but not much on atmosphere. There are two televisions in the dining area (showing food programming when we dined there).
We ordered battered broccoli and cauliflower to dunk in a cheese-beer sauce as a starter. For entrees we ordered a special -- asparagus risotto (with mushrooms, red pepper, and pork belly) and beef tips over mashed potatoes. Both came with garlic bread and we added salads with blue cheese dressing, tomatoes, green peppers, and cheese. Sounds good, doesn't it? But the food, I'm sorry to say, is mediocre.
The salads used an iceberg lettuce blend, which I don't mind if the other elements pack in flavor. The tomatoes were tasteless, and I found the stem end of a tomato in my salad (eck). The lettuce and veggies were not seasoned. The blue cheese dressing was good, though -- the best element.
As for our starter, the veggies for dunking were not battered -- they had a kiss of some kind of light meal and were undercooked. Both the broccoli and cauliflower still had too much (rubbery) bite. The cheese sauce wasn't liquid enough for dipping (we had to shmear our veg in it), and the taste was bland -- very much like a jar cheese sauce from the grocery store. I would be surprised if it were made in-house.
My entree, the beef tips, was just okay. The beef was nicely braised (tender) but the wine-reduction sauce tasted as if it had been prepared and brought in by a vendor (its taste and texture were similar to the Salisbury steak gravy from a frozen dinner), despite the fresh onions and green peppers in it. The potatoes were warm, but not creamy or buttery (also under-seasoned). They were made from smashed red potatoes.
The asparagus risotto was a real miss. The risotto was made with rice that had been precooked and stored cold. We know this because my partner found clumps of unheated rice in the dish. The rice was also too starchy (it had turned to gummy gloop). In the entire entree, he also found only two small pieces of pork belly, both of which had not been properly rendered. The dish was under-seasoned. The best I can say of these entrees is that they came in generous portions.
The garlic bread was made with nice bread toasted perfectly (I believe it was a baguette cut on the bias). It had no garlic flavor. There were no garlic bits or even the perfume of rubbed garlic on the bread. My partner said he thought the butter might have a faint taste of garlic powder, but I couldn't detect it.
The price for our dinner with tip was over $50 (we had diet soda to drink -- $2 each). The food is not a value at that price, given the poor preparation and questionable ingredients. There's an attempt to honor the spirit of pub grub, but the talent in the kitchen and commitment to quality is lacking at this time.
The service was good, by the way, through most of the meal. At the very end, though, the waitress disappeared and did not come back. We had a difficult time getting her attention -- we weren't able to pay until 15 or 20 minutes after we finished our meal. She had moved on to other customers.
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