Review: Chart House

I recently went to dinner with a good friend at the Chart House on Riverboat Row in Newport. It was a beautiful Saturday evening, so we decided to sit outside, which was definitely a good choice! The view of downtown Cincinnati is great...even if the Ohio River is not the most beautiful sight. It was fun to watch the boaters and to look out at the Montgomery Inn Boathouse.

We were torn between two appetizers, so we decided to order both! Why not?! We went with the jumbo shrimp cocktail and the East Meets West Tuna, which is what I was leaning towards. Both were good choices....although the tuna definitely proved to be the better choice, in my humble opinion. The shrimp cocktail was pretty standard, although their homemade cocktail sauce did stand out because it had a nice kick to it from the horseradish. Also, the presentation was cool. You can barely see it in the photo, but they served it over dry ice so you can kind of see the mist coming out from the bottom. Obviously better in person!

The East Meets West Tuna was next up, and as I said before, it was great! It came two different ways...tuna tartar with wasabi cream and seared ahi tuna with avocado and kim chee slaw. Both were served with plantain chips, which I was expecting to taste like bananas. Way wrong! They were very plain, a little sweet, yet a little salty. Both options were so good, although I preferred the ahi tuna with the delicious and crunchy kim chee slaw. I'd highly recommend this dish to anyone! 

For my entree, I chose to get the Filet Mignon. I know that Chart House is well known for it's fresh seafood, but I was really craving steak...and I was leaving for a beach vacation the next day where I could get even fresher (is that a word?) seafood. The filet was an okay choice....but the garlic potatoes it came with were an excellent choice. I ordered the filet to be cooked medium, and it came out more medium well. This is becoming a pattern with me! I should stop ordering filets from places that aren't really good steakhouses (Jeff Ruby's and Morton's always get it right). It was seasoned very well, which sort of made up for the fact that it was a little overcooked. The mashed potatoes were great; they had little chunks of potatoes in them and just the right amount of garlic.

For his entree, my friend ordered the Best of Shrimp. He's obsessed with shrimp, so this was the obvious choice for him! The dish includes shrimp done three ways: crab-stuffed shrimp, shrimp scampi and coconut crunchy shrimp. The shrimp scampi was just okay. They put a drizzle of the white wine butter sauce over the shrimp itself, so the surrounding pasta was basically plain. It would have been much better with more sauce. Shown in the middle of the photo was the crab-stuffed shrimp. I didn't try this, but my friend said it was really good. It seemed like there was a generous amount of crab, which I'm sure he enjoyed. Last up was the coconut crusted shrimp. This was pretty standard fried shrimp, but I really liked it. It came with a sweet plum sauce.

My friend ordered a cup of the lobster bisque, which the server forgot to bring out between our appetizers and our entrees, so it was brought out after our entree. The bisque was very good....although not as thick as I expected for a bisque. The best part was the large pieces of lobster - they definitely gave us a generous amount and it was fresh and delicious.

I do want to mention our service because it was not the greatest. We actually had to stand up and find our server a couple times. I ordered a glass of wine, which took forever to be brought to the table. The soup came out as an after-thought. When we needed refills, she was no where to be found. I dropped my fork on the ground and tried getting her attention multiple times with no luck. I had to go find another worker to get me a new one. There were a few other things that happened but can't remember....but I do remember that I was not impressed. The Chart House is not cheap at all, so I would have definitely expected better service.

Luckily I was with good company and enjoyed most of the food, so I didn't let the service ruin my experience. Overall, it was still a good time and we really enjoyed the view and cool breeze on the patio.

~Kris

Food: 3.5
Service: 2.5
Overall: 3.5

Review: Brio Tuscan Grille

My husband and I have a few places that we both love and know that we will have a good meal and time at…Brio is one of them. I don’t know exactly what it is about Brio, but every time we go there, we have a good time!  The only Brio around here is at Newport on the Levee. The only annoying thing about this is the parking. They do have valet though, or the garage underneath the Levee is only $2 on weekdays. 

We have gone to Brio with another couple before, and we all had a great time (could have been the two bottles of wine, but the food and service helped too). This night my husband and I went together.  He had made a reservation, but a reservation wasn’t needed on a Thursday night.  On a side note: (this is a really great tip that I got from Kris, if there is a wait, you can sit at the little bar by the grill where they make the flatbread pizzas and bruschetta and a server will wait on you there, first come , first serve. Just ask the hostess.   It’s actually a lot of fun!  We have sat there at least two or three times, and the cooks will sometimes give you free “samples” of the food!)

This night, my husband and I ordered a bottle of wine and took our time perusing the menu.  We ordered the Zinfandel, our wine that we can typically never go wrong with.  Here is the other thing we almost always do when we go to this restaurant: we share an order of bruschetta, share a salad, and share an entrée.  The portions are pretty big, so it’s plenty for two people.  We knew that we wanted to get the Bruschetta Quattro.  This is awesome! It’s four different types of bruschetta: Roasted Red Pepper and Fresh Mozzarella, Smoked Chicken & Portobello, Sliced Steak Bruschetta, and the fourth one changes.  We pretty much liked ALL of them, but we both love the roasted red pepper and fresh mozzarella.  It has a balsamic drizzle for a touch of sweetness that both of us love, but really all of them are great!  The bread is toasted but not too crunchy, I loved this dish!

Next we shared the Field Greens Salad which has gorgonzola, pine nuts, roma tomatoes and a balsamic dressing. This is really good too.  It’s definitely big enough to share, and they will portion it out for you if you tell them you are sharing.  I like this salad because it’s a little different than your typical salad but not TOO different. (The picture is half of the salad).

Last, we decided we wanted to share a pasta dish.  We have tried many dishes here, so we decided to ask the server for a recommendation.  He said his favorite pasta dish was the Penne Mediterranean.  This has mushrooms, spinach, sundried tomatoes, caramelized onions, feta and pine nuts. We ended up adding chicken, which was definitely a good idea.  My husband loved the chicken, it was cooked perfectly.   They split this dish for us as well. This dish was good.  All the ingredients went well together and it wasn’t too heavy. Sometimes when I get pasta dishes, I can barely eat much of it because of the heavy sauce, but this sauce was very light.  Would I get this again? I’m not 100% sure. It was good, but it wasn’t memorable (again, this is just half of the order).

All in all, I really like Brio. You can get a good meal for under $50, especially if you share like we did (excluding wine).  Most of their dishes are $15-$20 but check out their menu for more details. It does get really crowded on the weekends too, but they have a large bar area you can wait, or even walk around the Levee for a bit.
~~Posted by Kate