Website for this restaurant is located here.
Facebook page.
About the Restaurant:
This restaurant is extremely new, having only been open for just a month. The theme is essentially steakhouse, but there are many dishes across the menu with quite a bit of variety. Palo Alto Grill is located on University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto.
First Impressions:
Walking into the restaurant, I immediately got an almost rustic feel to the place. The main color I could see across was black for the chairs and tables which was nicely contrasted by the bright yellow cloth napkins we were provided with. My family and I were sat close to the bar, which was nice because there were 2 TVs going with playoff games right there.
We were almost immediately provided with some bread- baguette slices, a nut bread of some kind, and some of their famous pretzel bread that they make in house! Looks like this:
It was really great pretzel bread, in my opinion. It was airy and chewy and soft, and it had a very reminiscent flavor to classic soft pretzels you could get on a cart. The bread also came with a horseradish dipping sauce, which went very well with all three kinds of the bread. The horseradish didn't overpower at all, but rather perfectly complemented the bread.
Appetizer:
My dad and I decided to split a grilled octopus appetizer. This was my very first time trying octopus, but I did know about the common mistakes people would make, usually overcooking the octopus so that it was rubbery. This octopus was not like that at all. It was perfectly tender and just melted in my mouth. It was served with some delicious fingerling potatoes and garnished with a pesto oil, fresh parsley, and preserved lemon (I actually guessed that it was preserved lemon in the dish and then checked their page and found out it was preserved lemon, awesome!) It was a very bright and acidic dish that perfectly helped out the flavor of the octopus.
Main Course:
I was able to try each of the dishes my family got, so I will describe how I felt about each of them here. My little sister got the "Turf n' Turf," which was a boneless ribeye topped with pastrami, onions, banana peppers, and a peppercorn sauce. The steak was cooked perfectly and melted. I was curious about the pastrami with the steak at first, but the extra saltiness from the pastrami combined with the peppercorn sauce and the steak really balanced out and made it an interesting dish. In addition to that, my little sister also had sundried tomato macaroni and cheese to go with her steak. The mac and cheese was really good! I loved the crispy cheese on the top the intensified the flavor. That went really well with the sundried tomatoes that just deepened the flavor of the mac and cheese.
My dad got seared scallops with trout roe. Though I wasn't much of a fan of the trout roe, the scallops themselves were amazing and beautifully cooked. Definitely some of the best scallops I have ever tasted.
My mom and I both got duck with kombucha squash and kale. The duck itself was cooked very well and tasted very great. Each of the components of the dish also went well with the duck, from the sliced mandarins and sauteed kombucha squash adding nice notes of sweetness to complement the duck to the beautifully sauteed and tender kale. It also came with an interesting sauce that reminded me of the cider gravy my mom makes every now and then at Thanksgiving. Delicious!
Dessert:
My mom went for the blackberry tart with whipped mascarpone, lavender meringue sticks, and chamomile honey. I got to try a little, and it was great! The lavender meringue had an extremely intense sweetness to it that was offset by the mascarpone and tart. The blackberry was glazed with this wild honey that had a perfect balanced and made it deliciously sweet.
The rest of us all got the dessert special of the night: two green tea macarons with a coffee cream and chocolate tweel served with two tiny lime cheesecakes. Both were extremely good, but the cheesecake was definitely more memorable. I could taste extremely fresh lime from the zest and compote on top of the cheesecake that was way more intense than any other key lime pie I had ever tasted. Definitely one of my favorite desserts!
Overall:
Even though Palo Alto Grill is pretty new, they definitely know what they are doing, as they served up an amazing delicious meal for me and my family tonight! Definitely a place to come back to, because the food was unforgettable.
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