Crow Hill Restaurant and Bar
9 S. Front Street
Wilmington, NC 28401
(910) 228-5332
Open Wed,Sun 5:30pm-10pm
Thu-Sat 5:30pm-11pm
Liz's announcement of the opening in the Star-News.
For those of you from Wilmington, yes, Crow Hill is in Caffe' Phoenix's old spot. They've done a lovely job on the interior. The colors are warm and inviting and I love the blacksmithed tools and prints on the wall. We had a seat in the upstairs section, which allowed us to watch the coming and going and the bar crowd below. Fun!
The menu is short, which I like a lot. I would rather be given just a few choices than be overwhelmed with nine different fishes, six chicken dishes, and twelve cuts of beef. It's also often been my experience that when a place has only a few items on the menu, they can really throw their all into each of them, and the quality is excellent. That is definitely the case at Crow Hill.
There are a handful of signature cocktails, named after downtown streets and spots. I had the Red Cross Smash - a great medley of smashed berries, mint, bourbon and lime in a sugar-rimmed glass. The bartender clearly knew what he was doing. (Yes, it was a he. I watched him make my drink. There was a woman tending bar, too.) The wine list is limited, but good quality and from our view above, it looked like they had a good beer selection. (I forgot to look on the menu.)
Drinks came with a small clamp-lid jar of pickled vegetables. They were excellent, and obviously homemade. It was also a little off the beaten path and a surprisingly good accompaniment. It's not easy to do a vinegar-based something with drinks.
In the interest of getting a fair sampling from the menu (ahem) we each ordered an appetizer, Pootie had a salad, and we ordered different entrees and Pootie ordered a side of greens. For apps, I had the pickled eggs, stained a pretty purple but mildly flavored with a deviled dipping sauce (it was a dipping sauce of mustard, mayo and spices - just like a deviled egg). Man, they were good. Pootie had a bowl of marinated olives that were good quality and flavorful. He also ordered the plain green salad. They got the dressing spot-on. It was a lemon vinaigrette that wasn't sweet, but wasn't so puckery-tart that it tasted like floor cleaner. Perfectly balanced. (I have a problem with that in my own kitchen, so I respect a chef who can nail it.)
Pootie ordered the mountain trout, which came with a small-dice sweet potato hash with a little (I think) tasso ham and sweet onion. It was delicious. So was the trout. It was simply prepared, so you could taste the freshness of the fish. His side of greens was tender and flavorful without the noxious bitter edge I'm accustomed to with cooked greens. And they weren't just cooked to death and gloppy, either.
I had the chicken, which is kind of my litmus test for this kind of food. It's not as easy as you might think to pull off a perfectly cooked chicken, and very often it winds up being dry and tough and tasteless. This chicken was excellent. The skin was crispy and lemony-salty, and the meat was moist. It came with a side of a simple lemony panzanella and a seared lemon for squeezing on the chicken. That really made the flavor pop, too.
Pootie was thrilled to death that they had espresso available, and I went ahead and ordered the Compost Cookie in the interest of sharing with you a full range of their offerings. (ahem again). The two cookies came with an espresso cup of milk. Whole milk. Which we never have at home so it was like drinking cream. Perfect amount, and perfect with the cookies, which had a nice SALTY bite to them. You have no idea how happy I was about that. I really hate desserts that are just sweet. They need that salt to balance them out and this cookie has it. We shared one and brought the other one home. It's in the kitchen now, telling me lies about how it is the breakfast of champions.
The service was great. The wait staff were friendly, but not obsequious, and they didn't pull up a chair and visit with us. Our waitress knew the menu well and was able to make great suggestions. The guys who came to bus our table in between courses were nice and unobtrusive. There seemed to be good enthusiasm from all the staff for the restaurant, which is always nice to see.
One of the things I enjoyed the most about the experience was the attention to detail. The cutlery was cool and good quality (I want some forks like those!), the little clamp-lid jars of pickled veggies were neat and more interesting than just getting them on a plate, and Pootie's olives came in this gorgeous little olive-wood (yes) wooden bowl. I love stuff like that.
We were kind of shocked at how reasonable the bill was, given how much we ordered. That was a pleasant surprise. The price point is pretty middle-of-the road - $14 - $16 for high quality entrees.
We will definitely be back and will encourage everyone to go. Crow Hill is a great addition to the downtown restaurant scene.
Oh, hey, you know what else? They give you the leftovers (if there are any) in a cardboard container made from recycled materials. No Styrofoam! Rock!
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6 comments:
22Oct2010 Tried Crow Hill last night expecting a good meal. We were very disappointed. While the service was great everything we ate was tasteless, dry and tasted of the gas that it was reheated on. Please either try to get the old chef back or find a new one. The atmosphere is really great there, as well as the interior design. I would recommend this place for drinks only unless they change the chef and the menu.
I ate at this amazing restaurant on October 22nd as well and was completely amazed by the food, the wine and the service, not to mention what has been said to be ‘the most innovative atmosphere in town.”
The Grouper was out of this world, cooked to perfection. The table of 5 that I enjoyed my meal with was just as impressed as I and we had everything from wonderful wine, cheese plates, soups and entrées that were not only appetizing on the plate with its simple yet elegant presentation, but tasted as good as they looked. My friends and I gobbled up each course and were left full yet not stuffed… portion sizes made sense and didn’t make you feel as though you just ate a loaf of bread.
Elegant and fun, this new restaurant is certainly giving us a meal and experience to look forward to.
Oh, and yes the drinks and the bar are great.
November 24
I had high hopes for my Crow Hill dinner after speaking with the chef earlier in the day. Unfortunately reality dashed my dream. First the positives, I like the physical plant simple but comfortable with sense of elegance. Wait staff knowledgable and pleasant. Smoked trout salad was delicious. Short but nice selection of beer. It went downhill from there.
Shrimp and chorizo app was oily and bland. The asparagus with parmesan and prosciutto was predictable and boring.
The entrees were limited to barbeque platter, meatloaf, vegetable pot pie, hamburger, squash lasagna and the taco platter. Sounds like The County Kitchen. We were informed they had no fish that day and they just ran out of chicken( It was 7 pm and there were only eight people in the place).
The meatloaf tasted no better than a average hamburger with absolutely no seasoning. It was served with mashed potato and steamed green beans. Very original. What I am having dinner at my grandmothers? Please!
Pot pie also suffered from a case of the blahs. Lasagna was OK but nothing special. Taco platter didn't even belong on the menu.
Under no circumstances order desert unless you want to feel better about your own cooking.
Finally the wine list was so limited it was very hard to actually find anything I would drink.
Overall, the food was adequate, but extremely uninspired. I would not take anyone there you want to impress. One last positive note its not very expensive.
My husband and I ate at Crow Hill last night and I was extremely disappointed with everything from the service to the food. First of all, the server never introduced himself, and basically acted as if he was doing us a favor by bringing us our food and drinks. I ordered one of the specials, which was filet mignon, mashed potatoes, and creamed spinach; my husband ordered the cornish game hen. Because I am pregnant, I ordered my steak medium. When it arrived, not only was it rare (completely red in the center), but it, as well as my mashed potatoes and creamed spinach, were lukewarm. Then, when I cut in to the steak and realized it was not cooked enough, I immediately let my server know. He asked me, "Well, how would you like it cooked?" Um, MEDIUM, isn't that how I ordered it?! Feeling the need to explain why I was being so picky (I HATE being that person!), I told him I was pregnant and am avoiding undercooked meat. Without saying another word, he took my plate back to the kitchen, while my husband graciously shared his dinner with me (which was delicious, fortunately). TEN MINUTES later, he returned my steak to me, which was still not medium, but medium-rare, but I went ahead and ate part of my mashed potatoes and creamed spinach, which were by now completely cold. When the server came back, I opted not to say anything else because I was so irritated I feared I might lose my composure, therefore my husband just asked to have my leftovers boxed up. Now, the portions were rather large, which was a good thing considering the meal was $28.00; given the course of events thus far, care to guess how he brought my leftovers back to me? In a small, square styrofoam container that MOST restaurants have enough sense to use for small amounts of leftovers- for instance, this would have been appropriate to house JUST my mashed potatoes. Nope! Instead, my leftovers, which consisted of almost the entire steak, a scoop of mashed potatoes, and a couple of tablespoons of creamed spinach, were glopped together in a digusting mess that resembled a KFC bowl. Needless to say, that was my first and also my last venture to Crow Hill.
Since my original post, Crow Hill lost its original kitchen staff (http://foodies.blogs.starnewsonline.com/16785/crow-hill-loses-kitchen-staff-but-carries-on-with-new-brunch-lunch/). I was very disappointed to hear that, and have heard mixed reviews since then. I haven't been back to see what the fallout has been, but plan to go in the future. If it doesn't meet my standard, I'll pull this review. My standard with this site is to only put up info on restaurants I love, and if I don't like them, I just don't write about them, rather than badmouth them.
We and another couple ate at Crow Hill on Friday, May 20. Disappointment reigned. My mixed green salad with Portobello had chunks of unpicked crab and shrimp in the shell. It was SO dark in there, I didn't realize what the contents were until biting into then and had to indelicately remove the shells from my mouth.
The wait staff were either invisible or too eager to remove plates from which we were still eating from the table. My table partners had meatloaf--tasteless, and duck--raw. YUCK!
Do yourself a favor and AVOID Crow Hill.
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