The Raven Grill — Restaurant in Houston

The Raven Grill was established 1998, and has been providing a themed place to eat ever since it opened. The restaurant is themed around Edgar Allen Poe’s famous poem, The Raven, and it shows in the restaurant. You can find statues and pictures of ravens throughout the restaurant, plenty of books by Edgar Allen Poe, but unlike the poem itself it had an atmosphere that seemed warm and welcoming, a casual place to eat while still seeming somewhat refined. The service was friendly, even to a large group, while not being too friendly as to appear unprofessional. This gave a sense of a standard for service, and that standard was held throughout our whole meal, and even though our food came out staggered over a period of around 15 minutes, when the check was brought, an employee came out and told us that the computer system had shut down unexpectedly, and took around $20 dollars out of our bill. Since it’s opening over 20 years ago, The Raven Grill has had much time to define itself as the casual, comfortable, family restaurant that it is today. However even in all this time had to develop it seems to not have decided what type of restaurant it wants to be, it has such a variance of different foods and it suffers from this lack of dedication to a certain style. As soon as we sat down we were brought complimentary bread and butter, it was served cold, and we quickly understood why it was given free of charge. We started our order with an assortment of appetizers including unusually light, fluffy, and warm onion rings, that were tasty. The breading of these treats was thin and delicate which lead to a pleasant surprise of the taste of onion rings not overwhelmed by the oils in the breading. Unfortunately these surprisingly delicious onion rings were accompanied by rather bland quesadillas that tried to stand out with an overabundance of peppers within them, but ended up falling short, without much flavor. Also among the appetizers were fried oysters, which I eagerly tried, unfortunately they fell short of my expectations as soon as I bit into one and was instantly overwhelmed by the taste of salt. After these appetizers our main course came out we ordered seafood enchiladas and were pleasantly surprised after the long wait when we bit into one. The sweet softness of the crab, accompanied with the creaminess of the cheese formed a great foundation, and when combined with the shrimp it leads to a soft center with little hidden bites of juiciness inside. We also had some flautas which left much to be desired, they lacked flavor so they missed out on having anything to remember them by. Overall, Raven Grill has much to learn about making food, and would benefit greatly from focusing on a specific cuisine, but whatever they do make, they...

DO NOT ORDER THE OYSTERS.

The Raven Grill is a neighborhood restaurant that serves average food at best, but is convenient to home, has good service and a pleasant atmosphere. We have hosted large company lunches and dinners there in the past. On Monday, my elderly father was in town for a heart procedure the following day and I brought him there for a quick dinner close to home.

We both ordered the fried oyster dinners. The meal was literally one of the worst either of us have ever experienced. What we received were overcooked lumps of batter with no detectable oysters, or were so minuscule they should not have been served. We’re talking dime-sized if we detected any meat at all. Even my squash casserole was disgusting. I left most uneaten. We were in a hurry and stressed to leave to prepare for the hospital. My father insisted on paying, approximately $70 with tip.

It wasn’t until the next morning en route to the hospital that we started sharing our thoughts. Both of us had been up all night with severe heartburn and had been burping up the disgusting “fried oyster juice,” as we called it.

I called the manager from the hospital and he was a bit condescending like I was wanting something for free, asking me what I wanted him to do. He ended up telling me he would credit some of the bill back to my father’s card. To date, there has been zero credit to his card. I contacted the restaurant and was told he had refunded $20 of the tab (outrageous), but would check when he got in. I have not heard back from him. Both of the dinners should have been refunded. We were happy to pay for our drinks and the tip for the good service of our waiter.

Needless to say, I won’t be back and I won’t be hosting another company gathering at Raven...

My love and I had our first visit to this establishment this evening. I have to start this review by saying if we could give 3.5 stars we would because it’s not really a 3 or 4. It was after 6:30 so we were able to be seated right away. The wine list is not huge but it had wine we each liked. The restaurant was more than half full, and they were serving a large group at the time, so service started slow but all in all it was acceptable. I ordered the salmon steak with spinach and sweet potatoes but was also given garlic mashed potatoes even though it wasn’t part of the meal. I can say my plate was delicious. The salmon was perfectly cooked and seasoned. The spinach was very tasty and both potatoes were yummy. Unfortunately, my husband’s plate was not so great. He ordered the poblano chicken and it was slightly over cooked and the flavors were not as robust as he would have liked. It had some grilled veggies that were tasty but the herbed rice was a little dry. Our evening ended on a disappointing note. We ordered the vanilla creme brûlée and as a pastry chef I couldn’t eat it. It was over cooked and too large for our preference. They offered to remake it but as we were not wanting to wait we just left it as is. My husband also ordered an espresso but what he got was basically a sip of espresso. The cup wasn’t even halfway full. We have a pretty long drive home so we had to go. We’re still not sure if we want to visit again so we’ll see since this is conveniently...