Frederick C

Review of The Ranch Restaurant and Saloo...

This is an unusual place. I say that in the best o...

This is an unusual place. I say that in the best of ways. You would never expect this type of restaurant inside. You are probably thinking "Cowboy Bar" or some kind of BBQ place. This really is fine dining.

But its not the pretentious, over the top fine dining. Its well executed, appropriate, comfortable, elegant, creative, fine dining with a precision staff.

Wine selection runs all prices. I hate fine dining restaurants that only have super expensive bottles of wine. You can get that here, but they have so many others. Decor is very warm and "Chicago" like with tons of wood. But in a very clean, modern way.

Micheal Rossi is the executive chef and if you are familiar with him, he used to be executive chef at Napa Rose and Ambrosia. Many of the best people that worked with him (such as servers) follow him to where he ends up. Our waiter was one of those.

We had popovers which looked monstrous. Its really hard to make those in a restaurant due to the temperature control needed. We had the fried quail which had a delicate batter and was like really nice fried chicken. We had a halibut carpaccio which looked like art and tasted so delicate and had a nice mix of textures.

We then had salads. BLT wedge. Very cold and crisp and I loved how they cut the iceberg. The kale salad was very nice too, but my favorite was the beet salad.

Sea Bass in a saffron sauce was tender, and had that beautiful oily sea bass texture. NY steak was awesome. but the surprise was the pork chop. It was the best thing and I never order pork chops when there are good steaks. The texture was like nothing I have had before and flavors were infused deep into the pork. Not sure how they did this.

Deserts were incredible. Buttered Popcorn ice cream. It was very rich and almost like a cross between soft cheese and ice cream. A deconstructed Penaut butter and Jelly desert was something out of a molecular gastronomy tv show, yet a very familiar taste and texture when it all combined in your mouth. The sticky cake was insane!

I can't say enough about this place. I attached pictures of everything I ate and described above