Chop Block Grill — Restaurant in Brooksville

Brooksville has a new Thrill! Chop Block Grill!

The owners of Broad Street Market, which had been located in downtown Brooksville, uprooted and moved to this nearby location with a new and fresh format. They put a whole lot of time and effort into this new venture and it shows! The interior is brand spanking new, clean and bright. They installed ALL new equipment, so there's plenty of sparkling stainless steel to behold!

My Fab One and I had an incredible lunch yesterday. We cannot wait to go back for dinner, and lunch, and dinner, and lunch, and......

I got the Endless Soup & Salad Bar, which is just $9! I opted to also order a cheesy Angus Burger. In hindsight, I should likely have skipped the burger. It was delicious, but I had WAY MORE than I could eat! I will say I was intrigued with their gossamer thin French Fries, lightly dusted with rosemary! These wonders of modern design are oh so fine!

For my soup I chose the incredible edible Creamy Clam Chowder! This stuff is liquid gold. 'Clammily' loaded, every bite is a seafaring excursion into the deepest realms of the OHHHH-cean! A Real Clam Slam!

With all of this crazy good cuisine, the tasty bang explosions I experienced put me in Happy Dance mode! I had a veritable kaleidoscope of flavors swirling in front of me and keeping me in dreamy yum land!

Fab One ordered her favorite(which she'd usually order at their former Broad Street Market), none other than the Fried Shrimp. These shrimp are jumbo in size and flavor! It's awesome being able to eat an oxymoron! Jumbo....shrimp....LOL And this dish is only $10! (folks, that's insane!)

We ABSOLUTELY LOVE everything about Chop Block Grill! And talking to Eric, the owner, we can see his passion for his mission. He's a likable guy with an eye for taste! (20-20!)

The service is top notch! Our lovely chaperon was Alana. She is charming and eager to please. We know Ann, who is in charge of Front of the House. She's funny and personable, too! I call them the A-Team! Or, the A-List! Either way, they make the grade!!!

Do NOT waste your time getting out to try Chop Block Grill. Once folks read this review there'll be a long queue! Tell them John & Beth sent ya, you'll get a...

Was so looking forward to dinner at Chop Block Grill. Read great reviews, pictures of food looked amazing. And so it begins, we’re a party of 4, but my husband and I arrive 10 minutes early they offer to seat us...and the waitress did not come over till the other half of our party was seated over 10 minutes later 🤷🏼‍♀️She then Came over took our drink orders, each drink we ordered the waitress commented great... she comes to take our appetizer order same comment from the waitress “great”.. we comment about her comments she tells how amazing everything is there and if there is an issues they’ll take care of it.. well when it came time to getting out entrees not so great... a NY strip was ordered medium well... when it came was it a NY strip?? Not too sure it was thicker than any I’d seen before... and when it was cut into it was so rare it looked purple ... we asked the hostess to get our waitress ..when she can’t find her so she decided to take care of what we needed... showed her the steak she agreed it was raw.. she was then told the small bite he did try was too chewy she said I’ll just have them fire it back up... well no ... that does t solve the issue of it being too chewy... but she had already left the table ....the waitress comes over she’s told that the steak is too chewy he then proceeds to order Bourglalalala (whatever it’s called)Pork... the hostess comes back to tell us the pork will take 20 minutes well that doesn’t fly cause everyone else at the table is finished... by this point no manager has come over no apologies or what can we do to rectify this ... nothing... we couldn’t even get boxes for our food because the waitress’ original great attitude was no longer great when it was pointed out that she hadn’t touched the table for well over 20 minutes she said well the manager said you didn’t want the pork... what does one thing have to do with the other? And if that was the manager who knew???? We sure didn’t .. she never demonstrated any characteristics of a manger... needless to say the appetizers were good the steak was horrible and the...

Do you remember Ponderosa Steakhouse? Well, IMO, it's been resurrected in Chop Block Grill...except the prices are WAY higher. I've seen so many good reviews for Chop Block, I was anxious to try them. There were issues (petty, really), and some are described below. Bottom line was that my ribeye was less than 1/2 inch thick and full of fat. And I would argue that it wasn't even close the 12 oz that was advertised on the menu. The taste was okay (brought back memories of Pondersosa!), but for $39, I expected a little more. Well, a lot more actually. My husband's strip steak, at $40, was decent tasting, but, again, I would bet not the 10 oz that we paid for. Our dinner, at close to $150 with tip, was lackluster at best. Broccoli was good, rosemary fries were a little under cooked, bread sticks were okay. Wine list was underwhelming. We won't be back.

If you're still reading, and care, below are my nitpick comments...

I tried calling when they opened for a reservation (per their website), but wasn't able to get through; got a busy signal for over an hour and a half. We went anyways, figuring we'd go somewhere else if we couldn't get in. The manager (I assume) said they were having phone issues, and seated us in the hallway right away. There wasn't a drink menu on the table, and none was offered, so my husband went and got one. His wine was served in a water glass because they "ran out of wine glasses". How does that even happen? It was a nice water glass, but still. Our table was wobbly. Not the kind of wobbly that can be fixed by stuffing a few napkins under a leg. I think the table top needed to be screwed onto the base kind of wobbly...see video.

I realize that the restaurant business is very competitive, and costs have gone up substantially. But because it is so competitive, I would think that little things that make a difference in a dining experience that don't impact your daily costs (like service, decor, etc) would be a top priority in obtaining and keeping customers. And better meat cuts. Yep, definitely...