Editorial Review
- Rating:
- 13 / 20
- Price:
- $$$$$
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Peppercorn's Grill Articles — Things To Know Before You Go
While Italian cuisine involves many meats, cheeses, seafood, and vegetables, most of us associate Italian cuisine first and foremost with pasta. Pasta comes in many shapes and sizes, and each shap...read more
XiaoGou
Second-Class Citizen in an Italian Town
We are blessed, in the Greater Hartford area, to have an enormous number of Italian eateries per capita. Some of these places are just holes-in-the-wall. Others, like Peppercorn’s Grill, are major undertakings.
After having joined friends at Piccolo Arancio for the fourth time, we ventured into Hartford to Peppercorn’s. The restaurant itself is handsome enough yet the decor is nothing remarkable. Seating is very comfortable but a little close to other tables. The place was loud on our first visit but very quiet on another.
The menu makes a lot of promises that it doesn’t keep. Were the prices even a little bit more reasonable, this would’ve been a fault we could excuse. But the prices here cried out to us “premium ingredients!” The tastes and flavors told us otherwise. A specialty of the house, a ravioli dish with ricotta and orange rind, could’ve been thrilling. It was a cloying mess with a sauce that was sweet and punctuated with herbs that were bitter. Soft-sauteed meatballs, cooked in tomato sauce, are a house specialty at New York’s Rao’s restaurant. At Rao’s we spread the tasty morsels on our bread and ate with gusto; at Peppercorn’s, we picked at meatballs that weren’t really soft at all, and lacking in flavor (both meatballs and the soupy sauce that overwhelmed them).
A chopped salad was ruined by hard little nuggets of carrot shot through it. A friend’s grilled asparagus vinaigrette was over-charred, mushy and tasted like the refrigerator.
Our friend who had the house-signature peppercorn encrusted steak enjoyed the perfectly-cooked steak — we found the outside had been overly charred; but hey, he was happy. House special gnocchi, one night with herbs in a creamy sauce and another night in a sauce with bone marrow were serviceable offerings — but again, nothing special, yet priced at $20. In NYC, explainable. In Hartford, inexcusable.
Osso bucco had been boiled, was tough, had little flavor, and was just totally unappealing. It was reluctantly taken back to the kitchen and traded in for a (more expensive) veal chop. The veal chop was overcooked, but the seasoning was quite flavorful (did we taste sage and rosemary?) and when it came out they brought a dish of roasted potatoes with it that were just wonderful. We weren’t charged for the potatoes. When we got the bill, however, we were charged $6 “plate charge” for sharing the entree. We didn’t even bother asking to have that charge removed. It’d already been like pulling teeth to get the Osso Bucco sent back. We just wanted to leave.
The bar made a lackluster Negroni. Cocktails were very expensive and unremarkable.
The wine list. They have some superb wines here at lower-than-usual markups, particularly on the high end. Peculiarly, although they have a variety of Amarones, none are really of as high a level of quality as the high-level wines of other varietals. We’re Amarone lovers and felt it a worthwhile nit to pick.
Do not expect any guidance from the staff regarding the wine list. If there are hidden gems that’re lurking among the high-priced “usual culprits,” those gems will remain hidden unless the staff gets better-educated in wine service. Also do not expect to get the Riedel wine glasses unless your selection is over $200. Yes, kiddies, they’re blatant wine snobs. You have to buy-in to your luxury experience here!
Which brings us to the staff. The bartender acted like he was doing us a favor making us drinks while we waited (and waited and waited) for our table one evening. When I tasted my Negroni and asked him what kind of vermouth he used, he emitted a heavy sigh and then turned around to look. Hostess/greeters were overwhelmed both times (one busy and one not). Servers had no passion about what they were doing. They all, however, did become incredibly more friendly when our friends ordered a $300 bottle of wine on our first visit. The staff judges you on what you buy — and it’s obvious.
Desserts, none of which were memorable, were skipped on our second visit. So they decided to “skip” the coffees we ordered. We waited twenty minutes and then just asked for the check. The coffees were brought as we were standing up to leave. We did not sit back down.
If you want foods of this kind of style, go to their sister restaurant, Piccolo Arancio. There are a dozen other Italian restaurants in the area where one’s money would be better spent than at Peppercorn’s grill.
Dishes Tried:
Lobster Fettucine "Bolognese"
Naming a lobster dish after a slow-cooked favorite dish is just wrong. We tried this because the concept was intriguing. It backfires.
Peppercorn-Crusted Ribeye
Stick with this dish if you dine here.
Best Dishes at Peppercorn's Grill
View all dishesThese dishes from the Peppercorn's Grill menu are contributed by Menuism users directly, as part of a restaurant review, or as part of a photo upload.
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Lobster Fettucine "Bolognese" (
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Peppercorn-Crusted Ribeye (
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