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| - The Charcoal Room is a solid restaurant. I had a reservation to eat here before going to a show at the Smith Center. I was promptly seated and soon brought water and then iced tea.
I was thinking of getting French onion soup but I noticed that steaks come with house salad and baked or mashed potatoes. Asking my server about the size of the salad, he assured me it was large. I opted to forego an appetizer and go instead with the 10 ounce filet, house salad with blue cheese dressing, and baked potato with butter, sour cream, and chives. For dessert, I ordered carrot cake.
The salad was indeed very large with iceberg and romaine lettuce along with cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, and some other items. The blue cheese dressing was very good and the server ground fresh pepper to taste.
The steak was a little too done for my order of blue. It was more on the rare side than being less done than that. I think too many chefs want to make sure they have a char look that they overcook when ordering blue. The steak was very tasty and quite tender. The vermouth mushroom butter ($2 charge) made no difference in taste. The mushroom flavor nor vermouth were there. I'd get the steak naked another time. The baked potato was stuffed with the things mentioned above and was good.
For dessert, I ordered the carrot cake. It was a large slice of classic cake. It was a bit dry, however, as if it had been the exposed end from the day before. It was more plain carrot cake without a lot of spice as some bakers do and except for the dryness, it was quite good.
Service was excellent.
I am of two opinions about bundling the salad and potato as part of the cost of the steak. On the one hand, I like the fact that you're not being charged a lot for separate items in your meal. On the other hand, it would be nice to have soup instead of a salad and I'd order French fries any day of the week before I'd get a baked potato.
I was made aware by my server that the sides were all very large so I stayed with just the potato that came with the meal and that was more than enough. This is an OK place to have dinner.
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