The Grill By Thomas Keller on Seabourn Odyssey

The Grill is one of the options for dinner onboard the Seabourn Odyssey. It is the only restaurant that requires reservations. 

 It is styled as an old fashioned American steakhouse down to the decor and upbeat music.  The menu also is reminiscent of a Morton's or Ruth Chris with a few twists.  

They start you with crudites and cheese sticks served with a green goddess style dressing with a bit of lemon olive oil.  

Also ordered a cocktail  One of my favorites: The Peruvian classic Pisco Sour.

A balance of sweet and sour with froth from egg whites while it is shaken.  A good palate cleanser. 

One of the signature dishes is the Caesar salad prepared tableside.  

The dressing is made from garlic cloves which get rubbed into the wood and then removed.  Then mustardy anchovy paste, egg yolk, olive oil and fresh grated parmesan cheese are added and emulsified.  The completed dressing is then smoothed up onto the sides of the bowl before the bite size Romaine and parmesan croutons are lightly tossed.

Couldn't be any fresher.   The dressing was more mustardy than I prefer. I would have liked more of a focus on the anchovy. But it was a delicious salad.  

Also ordered the clam chowder.  They bring you a bowl with two pieces of pork belly and some diced potatoes. 

Then pour in the chowder. 

The soup was so creamy and smooth.  I am guessing they use a food mill to grind down any small bites and then further emulsify with a hand blender.  The soup was tasty, but was missing a real deep flavor.  Had this been a blind tasting, I would have guessed this was a potato leek soup. Very flavorful but not as good as the clam chowder at The Wake on Virgin Voyages Scarlet Lady.  

Next up was the rib eye cooked medium rare.  Here they butcher the rib eye to remove the fatty portions, leaving just a medallion.  

I think that was a mistake since one of the best parts of a rib eye is all the flavor the marbled and rendered fat adds. The steak was cooked a perfect medium rare. And it had some decent flavor but I thought about how much better it could have been.  

We also tried the Lobster Thermidor. 

This dish is an example of one of the "twists" that The Grill puts on standard dishes.  All Lobster Thermidor I have had or seen is where the lobster is removed from the shell, combined with some breading, tarragon and other spices and then put back into the shell for a quick broil in the oven. 

Here, the lobster was perfectly butter poached. Tender and meaty lobster meat.  Super flavorful and tasting like the sea.  It was served with a tarragon butter sauce which was also flavorful. Of they had stopped there this would have been a better dish.  Underneath the sauce was a parmesan cracker as big as the plate.  It added nothing to the dish.  Had it been a little salty or had more cheese flavor, it might have worked.   So a decent dish that took a wrong turn.  Kind of a waste of some very good lobster.  

As with most steak houses, there are side dishes served family style.  We tried the whipped potatoes, glazed carrot (not pictured), sauteed mushrooms and creamed spinach.  

The carrots were certainly the highlight.  Cooked perfectly so they still had a little bite to them.  And in a delicious butter sauce.  The potatoes were also great!!   Whipped so smooth without being gummy.   If you have ever made mashed potatoes, you will know what I mean.  Overwhipping or overmixing can produce somthing closer to wallpaper paste.  Not her. These were velvety and rich, further accented by the slight bite of the creme fraiche. The mushrooms were very good.  What is not to like about mushroom sauteed in butter?

I have never had creamed spinach that wasn't succulent and delicious.  I guess I have been lucky. That was the least successful of the sides.   My wife and I each took a bite and agree we would go no further.  They tasted grassy to me. Without any other flavors or creaminess.  

Desserts were decadent chocolate layer cake and a lemon meringue tart. They also brought out two mega chocolate chip cookies.  

The cake was my favorite. Rich, moist, dark chocolate cake with a milk chocolate mousse.  Everything you would want in a great chocolate cake. It was served a la.mode.  The vanilla ice cream flavor was overtaken by some sea salt which didn't belong there.  

The lemon tart had some promise but had been served on a pool of raspberry foam.  The crispy shell soon became soggy.  We did manage to rescue the shell from it's watery grave in time. Some good, tart lemon flavor that didn't need the addition of the raspberry foam.  Maybe they should consider serving that on the side so you can decide to add it. 

This was a tasty meal and one I would have enjoyed on land at any average steak house.  But because this was a Thomas Keller restaurant, the chef from the famed French Laundry, I expected more.  More twists.  More attention to detail. More interesting flavors. I think all these dishes could be found at Morton's or Ruth Chris. Does that make them bad?  No.  But I expected more.