There are times I only visit a restaurant once, and I'm never quite sure if I've gotten the true essence of the place. Other times I go several times and I feel a bit more confident about my rating. And then there are times that I really, really want to be able to give a place a higher number, but I just can't quite justify it even though I've been several times. That's the case with Berryhill & Company.
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy this place. But after several visits of pretty good food, I think a lot of what I love is the atmosphere (which definitely counts) and with wanting to like this place. So here's the scoop....
We met long time friends, Steve & Leah for a Friday night dinner at 7pm and the place was packed. S&L thought Berryhill must know me as a blogger because we felt we had the best seat in the house--great corner table just checking everyone out. Alas, we were ignored completely until we snagged an employee at 7:45. We didn't even get water! (Obviously blogging about restaurants does not make me famous by any stretch of the imagination.) Whoops, something had gone wrong, nice apology, a little mix-up with assigned tables and we were assured that service would be great from then on.
We started with the calamari with aioli and pear gorgonzola pizza with pesto and pistachio nuts as appetizers and a nice bottle of Elk Cove pinot noir. The calamari was decent, the aoli was great and the gorganzola pizza was extremely tasty (could have been a bit hotter though.) Loved the pinot noir.
We forgot about being forgotten and all seemed well. The atmosphere of this place really is great. There's live music every night, (we had a so-so piano player.) But it is still really nice to have live music. You feel like you're somewhere hip and happenin'.
After our appetizers, we had soups and salad. Mark had french onion soup (pronounced good), I had the tomato basil soup (just reported about in the newspaper) and yes it was good but then again a little parmesan cheese makes almost anything good. The presentation of Leah's salad was gorgeous and it was a great balsamic vinaigrette, Steve absolutely loved the corn chowder. Things were looking up.
Unfortunately, somehow we were forgotten again. We had to ask for drink refills and dinner was a long time coming. For dinner Leah & I had the salmon on coconut rice, Mark had the roasted tomato ravioli and Steve had the tiger shrimp linguini. In a nutshell, it was all just ok. As I know I've said before, I want a dinner that's better than I can make at home and the salmon was a bit dry, the coconut rice lacked interest. The ravioli and linguini were good, but no one was simply raving.
We split a piece of chocolate cake and tiramisu--yummy! No problems with dessert.
Overall, there seemed to be peaks and valleys. Service good, service not so good. Some food great, some just ok. I love the location, I love the atmosphere (did we mention the la-de-da bathroom?) but if only B & Co. could elevate the valleys to the peaks we would enjoy this place even more.
