Griswold Bar & Grill

1 Reviews on “Griswold Bar & Grill”

• CallMeMochelle

  Established in 2009, Hotel Fullerton has gone though many changes, from the name of the hotel to the restaurant and the menu. More recently Fredie Garcia became the new Director of Food and Beverage, and Zach Geerson became the Executive Chef. Local foodies may recognize this classically trained chef was formerly from Tempo Urban Kitchen in Brea.We came here on a Wednesday night, and grabbed the last table. The menu was quite eclectic, and we decided to let Chef Zach select for us the more popular or recommended dishes. We started off with a soup, a parsnip soup with apples. I was not too familiar with parsnip, but I went along with the suggestion. I was quite amazed at this end up being my favorite dish for the whole evening. The soup had the consistency of a butternut squash but the apples really gave the soup is very refreshing taste.The next course was the Grilled Octopus, with onions, capers, lemon and salsa verde. I was quite surprised that this grilled octopus had a nice smoky flavor to it. In fact, I had no idea it was octopus, and it could have passed for a meat from a Japanese Izakaya grill. Another excellent selection.The next dish was the Duck Confit salad served with radicchio, smoked beets, picked walnuts, fennel and pear. Chef Zach warned us that that would be more on the salty side. Unfortunately, our order did not have the pears and walnut (we didn’t realize this until later) and sadly we were not pleased with the salad. Later, we did tell the Chef we were not pleased with the selection and wished he had added more pears. He looked at our salad and realized the restaurant forgot the pears. Embarrassed, he said that the texture and the sweetness from the pears would have complemented the salad. Sadly, I’m a huge fan of duck, but wasn’t a fan of this particular dish, and quite possibly because it was missing two key ingredients.The Asian Paella came out next and this dish had a very good flavor to it. Served in a traditional Korean bowl (similar to that of a bimbimbop). It had a good mixture of scallops, calamari, and shrimp, but I wish it had fish also. The Sambal Aioli gave it a nice kick, bringing just a light heat to the dish. I was not a fan of the olives in this dish, but it was supposed to be a marriage of Mediterranean with Asian. If you like some spiciness to your food, this is a good choice.Our final entree was was the Vietnamese inspired house made pork meatballs with fresh handmade ramen. When we receive the dish, I was expecting the traditional thin ramen noodles, these were a little thicker cut like linguine. The noodle was nice and chewy, and the broth was excellent. In fact, I told the chef that I wish my bowl had more broth. Unlike the previous dishes, where they were suitable for sharing, this bowl is really a dish for one. My one disappointment was not enough broth to enjoy.To end our evening, we decided the house donuts and coffee. This seems to be the restaurant’s signature dessert, and the donuts were more like beignets. These small bites of airy pastries were lightly covered with cinnamon and sugar, topped with a lemon zest and a dash of salt.The donuts were served hot, and paired with a side of cold coffee sauce for dipping. Chef Zach said the irony of this dessert was normally you would have hot coffee and cold donuts, so they chose to give you hot donuts and cold coffee. We decided to have both, and paired it with a cup of hot coffee and it was a perfect ending to our meal.I would’ve never guessed that a hidden gem will be located in a hotel off the 91 freeway. With the exception of the meatball ramen, the portion sizes are shareable. The place is tiny, so I would recommend making reservations, especially if you want to come as a group. Plenty of parking on site, but use your GPS to find the hidden street that takes you to the hotel. callmemochelle.com

  April 30, 2016, 2:30 am

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