Gallagher's Grill — Restaurant in Covington

I read the reviews and heard all the great word of mouth...so we gave Gallagher's a shot. It was a special night for us, and first off, the service was exceptional. From the host to the waitstaff, top notch. Now the bad. For a place to claim to have the best steaks on the Northshore...meah. My ribeye was edible. That's about it. Cooked medium, even medium well, it should not have required I saw at the meat with my knife. I'm not a fancy guy, so this was a rare experience at a pricey restaurant. I learned an important lesson. I do not like "a la carte" at all. To pay the price they charge for just a steak, then add a side for a price most appetizers go for...it just doesn't make sense for the consumer. The side I chose was the asparagus with "hollandaise sauce". I love asparagus and prepare it regularly, and just assumed that one should trim off the hard, fibrous, inedible ends of the stalks, but what do I know. I also have made hollandaise sauce a number of times, which can be time consuming and finicky, but should not be presented on your side dish as runny, foamy and basically buttery lemonade. My wife tried the catfish pecan, which was mushy and had a muddy taste...sigh. The side she chose was potatoes au gratin, which brings to the imagination, thin slices of potatoes, baked with an abundance of cheese...or in this case some lumps of potatoes in a semblance of cream sauce with a spattering of cheese on top. To return to the "a la carte" aspect...I do no see the appeal of having numerous plates and dishes consuming the table space and making it a tedious endeavor to bring one stalk of asparagus from the bowl shaped dish to the inadequately sized steak plate one at a time to be able to cut it and eat it. We paid for the meal without complaint, as there was nothing that could have been remedied at the time, the damage was done, lesson learned. But I wanted to ensure that my experience was available for people thinking of going there. While most people seem to rave extensively about the place, I could in good conscience, not. The three stars above are solely for the exceptional front staff, if I could just rate them, it would be...

The service was attentive and amiable, but the quality of the cooking was quite poor for most of the dishes we had. Instead of shrimp remoulade, the dish by that name consisted of four shrimp (tender and moist though they were) onto which a garnish of bland, low-horseraddish remoulade glaze had been drizzled; next to that were supermarket mixed greens with Italian dressing. It was like someone from South Dakota was trying to serve New Orleans food. The softshell crab was well fried but the pasta it came with was mushy and swam in a milky thin sauce. The crispy fish was very well prepared and had beautiful crabmeat that withstood the oily sauce it was bathed in. The courtbouillon was not at all good, despite its fresh ingredients; the blackening seasoning on the too-dry fish was pointless when submerged in the highly overseasoned sauce (overseasoned not because it was too spicy but because it was defined by what tasted like a supermarket Cajun spice blend). Why add expensive crabmeat to an overstirred, unsubtle sauce when the crab taste is utterly lost? Did a chef ever try that batch of courtbouillon and say "yeah, that’s what we're going for"? Unlikely; none of the dishes, save maybe the crispy fish, were thought-through or scrutinized for detail before they left the kitchen. The cooking appeared to be on auto-pilot, running tired plays from a tired menu. The steaks at the next table looked good, so I think we were just at the wrong restaurant for fine seafood. The wine was also a miss -- sour rosé and cartoonishly sweet riesling. They sure charged us enough: dinner for three with tip was close to $280 for a course and a half of food and less than two drinks a head. (The litter in the parking lot was apparently complimentary.) For that money you could take a cab across the lake and back and find a real kitchen with someone who's not half-asleep running the show....

I struggled with this review. You see - this isn't a typical establishment for us (due to the cost) but it was for a close friends birthday and so here we are! We started with the Eggplant Orleans - perfectly fried eggplant disc's topped with a cream sauce that contained crab and had a very light flavor of lemon. The eggplant was very crispy on the outside and the sauce had just the right amount of lemon flavor. Not tart, but you knew it was there. It made you want to eat slowly and enjoy it. We had the Chilean Salmon and the Mixed Grille - personally, I'd pass on the Mixed Grille and go straight for the salmon (it was GREAT). Not that the Mixed Grille was bad, mind you - but the salmon was a more complex dish and the latter was, well - two lamb chops and two tiny birds with a lot of small bones to pick around (very, very good, by the way). We had the corn grits for the side (sides are big, you can certainly share on with your date) and they were great, and a good pairing with the salmon we thought. We wrapped it up with the New Orleans bourbon bread pudding - a mountain of a desert that you'll push to get through because it is that good. The drinks (two old fashioneds) were as go be expected from any bar. I can't say we'll be back soon as it is a VERY spend place for us, and we feel even on expensive dates we get better value for our tastes elsewhere (Cena', for example) but I do encourage you go visit Gallaghers to see if it is a fit for you. You will not be dissapointed. The only (minor) issue we had was things like mixed up desserts and forgotten drinks by the wait staff, but it was an extremely busy night, the impact was negligible, and ultimately - we're all...