The Downtown Grille

Downtown Grill, the clean white table cloth steak and seafood spot of the downtown mall. Upon entering The Downtown Grill we realized how spacious this restaurant is. Plenty of room for larger parties, tables of two or bar spacing for someone/a group that wants to watch a game. As always we gravitate to the bar area. That's where all the activities, events and cooler staff is, right!?!?!? We were greeted by Paul behind the bar that catered to our needs. He was awesome!! We joked, had a few small plates and great cocktails/wine. His service was on par with the top of the industry. The food was well prepared and we enjoyed the dishes that we ordered. Like I said we had a few plates and they were timed perfectly. Kudos to whoever was keeping an eye out. Thanks for a handful of great experiences DG!!

For our appetizer we got the candied bacon which is crispy pork belly with a maple brown sugar bbq glaze and underneath it is apple slaw. I personally never eat slaw but I gave this a try. I had never ordered pork belly at a restaurant either. This appetizer was amazinggggggggggggggggg. I would go to this restaurant just to get that. It really is that good. I really enjoyed the apple slaw too. For our meals - I got the bone-in center cut filet mignon 14 ounce. I had never ordered a bone-in steak of any kind so it was a bit of an adventurous thing for me to do. I didn't really care for it too much. It didn't seem to be 14 ounces to me but I am sure part of that was because of the bone. The steak was not cooked evenly too. It also had some connective tissue that I did not care for. I think their steak would have been wayyyyyyyyy better and more of what I wanted if I had just ordered the regular steak. I think it is hard to probably cook a steak evenly when it has the bone on it. Parts of it were really charred and I do not care for the charcoal/burnt taste. I would go back and try out the regular filet mignon if we are ever back in town or around this area in the future. He got the seafood chowder which was the soup of the night I believe. He said he liked it and would order it again. For our sides we got the au gratin potatoes which we thought were good for what they were but they had lot of onion and garlic taste to it so you have to love that if you want to order it otherwise request to not have those or less of them. It is 50/50 it seems on whether restaurants put onion and garlic in them. I personally didn't like it much and neither did my date so we didn't eat much of it. He got the fried Brussels Sprouts that had aged balsamic on them. He said the balsamic vinaigrette was fantastic and he would definitely order these again. For dessert we got raspberry sorbet which was just as good as Ruth Chris' dessert. I really love sorbet for dessert at fancier places. We also got the crème brulee and it was delicious overall but the crust was a bit too thick. Service was fast and friendly. I liked how they had one particular person going around to refill the waters. I think that is smart especially at busy times. Also, we did not have to wait long for our plates to be cleared. Some of the waiters/waitresses were scrapping the crumbs off of other patrons tables but ours did not get scrapped off by our waitress. lol!!! I have had that done at Ruth Chris. I think it just steps up the service a notch but isn't required, of course. The atmosphere has an old timey feel with relaxing music. It was nice looking inside and you would probably feel like you want to wear nicer clothes but you don't have to. We were dressed casual since we had been strolling the downtown mall looking for a place to eat dinner. There was about a 50/50 mixture of people dressed up and people dressed casual in jeans/shorts and t-shirts/tanks.

I visited the DTG for the first time tonight, and it did not disappoint. I reserved a table and noted that we were bringing a wheelchair, and they placed us at a comfortable table and everything was accessible (entrance, access to table, we didn't use the restrooms). We began with martinis, mine a Hendricks, neat with olives (perfect, just perfect), and my daughter had the Pomegranate martini with Ketel one. Now I'm not a sweet drink fan, but this was quite nice. Not sweet, and with a wonderful intriguing fruity foam at the top (who puts foam on a martini?) Grand Mariner and Passion fruit juice. She loved it. She had salmon, perfectly done and nice veggies to complement. The mini crab cake appetizers some of the best I've had, lump crabmeat with no filler, crispy on the bottom and moist and flavorful inside with a wonderful spicy remoulade sauce. I had the steelhead trout, just as nicely done. They brought my daughter a slice of flourless chocolate cake with a candle, though we hadn't room for deserts, we were glad they did.Our waiter, Tito, took great care of us even though he was clearly busy. The service was attentive and crisp, I felt like I had to say very little to convey anything we needed. What a lovely gem in Charlottesville.

This seems to be a restaurant in serious trouble. There were two dining rooms totally empty and we were there prime dinner time on Father's day. The steak we ordered med was charcoal the first time. The second one was cooked as requested However... It was an inferior piece of meat full of tendon and gristle. This was after having to return a glass of water that had a gnat ...floating.... and a lettuce wedge that had lots of brown discolored leaves. Never again

It was expected to be a "prime usda" Rib Eye... unfortunately it couldn't be the case with so few fat (cf. Picture). So very upset. A manager who is not able to select their providers according to this certification and makes their customers believe that the meat is "prime USDA" certified cannot deserve an high scoring. It is just unacceptable. Go to the best steakhouse of Cv. whose the first letters are AB. Much more serious....and delicious.