Last night was my fifteen year wedding anniversary. Back at Valentine's Day we went to City Range in Greenville for the first time. Honestly, neither of us was very impressed with our service, presentation or meal. However when you have a gift certificate you decide to give it another try...LOL!
So we decided to give it another try. I have to say that we were still not impressed. The atmosphere is nice, warm, and relaxing. I am sure that it is just wonderful in the winter with the huge stone fireplace that is the middle of the dining room. I admired the lighting fixtures but completely forgot to take a picture of them.
As far a service, the hostess warm and welcoming and our waitress was polite, kept us happy and I have no complaints there!
Now on to our meal.....
They start your meal off with a warm loaf coated in garlic and parmasan cheese. This was very good and I throughly enjoyed it! The butter dipping sauce was great.
I had the house salad which was made up of a fresh mix of romaine & iceberg lettuce, garlic croutons, and a tomato and cucumber relish each of skipped on the House Paris salad dressing and both opted for honey mustard. I really enjoyed the sald and loved the tomato and cucumber relish. It was a simple salad and the presentation was just the "normal" salad.
Tommy had the traditional Ceasar's Salad which was made up of romaine lettuce, croutons, anchovy garnish, and classic caesar dressing. His comment was that it reminded him of the salad at McDonald's....(I don't think that is that great)
Our appetizer selection was the Signature Trio made up of crab cakes, shrimp cocktail and tuna wontons. The menu reads a "shareable sampler". This statement is true for the two of us however if you have a large party it is not enough. There is only two of each selection. My favorite selection on the tray was the crab cakes that were glazed with Meyer lemon aioli, then I suppose the shrimp cocktail which was just the ordinary shrimp cocktail...nothing special, and then the tuna wontons. According to their menu the tuna wontons are "award winning" the are made of sashimi tuna, spicy aioli, scallions, pickled ginger, sweet soy glaze, atop bite size crispy wonton. They were good but I would not put "award winning" on them! (remember this blog is just of my opinion)
Now on to the main course...
Tommy had the Black and Blue..... a lightly blackened tenderloin medallions, pan-seared,layered with blue crab cakes, topped with béarnaisesauce blend, served with garlic mashed potatoes &asparagus. Now I did not taste his (normally I do) Tommy said that the tenderloin medallions were tender and the crab cakes were good but the mashed potatoes and toast that it made them soggy and he could not eat them.
I had the Bourbon Pecan Chicken... a marinated boneless, skinless chicken breast, pecan coated, flash fried then baked, served with bourbon pecan cream sauce, garlic mashed potatoes & seasonal vegetable garnish. The chicken reminded me of a frozen Tyson chicken patty from the local grocery with some sauce poured over the top. I did not even eat half. The sauce was okay and the mashed potatoes did not taste like "real" potatoes... I think they tasted almost like the instant potatoes I used to make when I first got married. The veggies were so soggy that I could not eat them at all.
Over all the food was not TERRIBLE! It was just not worth $70.00 (thank God for the gift certificate) We do not mind paying money for good food but this was not worth it. I felt like I could have created my dish with a bag of Tyson chicken patties at home.
So there you have it! My first restaurant review....
15 years ago when I first married my hubby we enjoyed many meals of Hamburger helper. So this week as I was walking through Walmart, I saw the new Ultimate Cheeseburger Mac by Velveeta meals which really resemble Hamburger Helper. I decided that I would make this lovely dish because we all really like Velveeta cheese. This was really funny because it was the week of our anniversary and I swear we had more meals of Hamburger the first two years we were married than anything else. I remember at one time we had 15 boxes.... all a different flavor.
