Sage and Salt — Restaurant in Litchfield

April 2023 - This month's wine dinner had patrons sit outside in the covered outdoor dining room with warm temps in the air. The Italian wines featured were given a description by the host with each course. All were paired well with the food. Always like steel tank chardonnays. Loved the lamb chop with rosemary demi-glaze.

The January 2023 wine course dinner was so appealing we had to partake even though we were there in December. It was the first menu where every course, five out of five, looked delicious. Seafood bisque, Stuffed clams oreganato with bacon, Tortellini Bolognese with shaved parmesan and arugula, Surf & Turf Beef Medallion and Grilled Shrimp Bernaise with garlic mashed, and a chocolate chip bread pudding with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce. Every dish was spectacular. Only one thing: The tortellini had no seasoning even if it merely wasn't cooked in salted water. The best course: the beef medallion that was a spectacular cut of meat in terms of flavor and tenderness served with one shrimp on top. Carving the beef a few times with the shrimp, I liked them both together. Our favorite wine: an Albariño from the highest altitudes in Spain, "Terras Gaudio" label. The espresso martini on the rocks with dessert was very flavorful and a fine accompaniment. A great value.

The December five course dinner was enjoyable. Food included wine pairings with crab stuffed mushrooms, blackened scallops, duck confit, lasagna and a mint chocolate chip cream puff.

4.8 Another fine five course dinner here in October 2022 featuring Italian wine pairing . We liked our seating area much better than our first wine dinner here which was small and brightly lit. Patrons had the option of placing an order for any of the wines tried along with cheese and crackers before the meal.

It's surprising to me it's been so long since we've dined at Saltwater Grille in Litchfield because their food is incredible. Covid probably added to the gap in time, so we were happy to finally book a reservation for their monthly wine dinner this November. This month's five course menu sounded perfect:

Butternut Squash Bisque with crab & leeks; Boston Bibb lettuce with chicken, walnuts and apple; Duck Confit Wellington with fig glaze; Bourbon BBQ braised short ribs on Yukon gold mashed with crispy Brussel sprouts and a mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwich for dessert.

Everything delivered in terms of flavor and Chef skills. My favorite was the short ribs, but each dish was prepared well. The proper pacing of each course steadily fills patrons up. I was hoping the dessert would be a mini ice cream sandwich, but no, it was full size with thick fresh baked cookies.

Of course an accompanying wine comes with each serving. Starting with a Prosecco toast and ending with a Port cocktail, two whites were paired with the first two courses, and two reds with the third and fourth. A red wine person, for once I preferred the whites - a Pinot Grigio and a Chardonnay - both for their smoothness. The Pinot Noir and Zinfandel were noteworthy. At the end of the meal a list of the wines showcased in the dinner is given to patrons with bottle prices at a nearby liquor store sponsoring the wines.

The wine poured throughout the meal are tasting pours not whole glasses. Clientele joining us in the smaller well lit back room varied from seniors to two women with a well-behaved baby and toddler to a bigger table for the wine rep and his guests. New to the Grille's wine dinner, we learned we could ask for a top off of the wine being sampled by the circulating server.

A nice experience. If you'd like to give it a try, go to their website and sign up for their email notifications. Each month is a new menu. We look forward to revisiting their regular menu on our next visit for a couple of entrées we have to enjoy again. The bar seemed to be the most lively place to roost.

Really delicious food. Duck bacon wrapped scallops, fish and chips and spinach & artichoke crusted salmon. The service was poor due to a novice learning, but they comped us a drink,...

The only positive experience dining at Salt and Sage tonight was after we left and drove 3 minutes down the road for ice cream at Arethusa Farms. In all seriousness, very poor experiencing dining-in tonight. Sounds punitive to say, but just the objective truth. Some of our family members have dined at their sister restaurant Salt 2.0 in Torrington and really like it, so they thought we’d give Salt and Sage a try under the impression it’d be a safe bet as well. Complete opposite. To start, our birthday girl ordered first (she had to leave early) and the rest of us waited until others in our party arrived later. She ordered her steak medium rare. Stake came out hardly cooked at all - even the server had an audible shocked response (which we found funny) and just brushed off the issue - it happens... We sent it back asking for it to be cooked more, and to their credit, they did end up cooking an entirely new steak, however the new one still wasn’t close to medium rare. We get it can’t be “perfect” and there’s always a level of subjectivity to the levels of a cooked steak, but this was a clear deviation from medium rare… we ended up just sending it back and having them take it off the bill. Our birthday girl left and the rest of our party arrived. From when the entire group ordered (6 in total) until we got our food, it took just over an hour… seemingly no reason for it to take that long at 5:15pm on a Thursday with a light crowd in-house. At about the hour and 10 minute mark from when we ordered, I got up and asked for a manager mainly out of sheer curiosity why it was taking so long - again, because it was a light crowd and at 5:15 on a Thursday… They said that because of the way their system prioritizes online orders, they got an influx of online orders and ours got pushed to the bottom. Our food came out about 5 minutes after that (1hr 15min since we placed our order…not from when we arrived, from when we placed our order…). I ordered a chicken and cheese quesadilla from the happy hour menu. It came out as a cheese quesadilla. So that’s 2 dishes they made wrong now. In all fairness, through, they did take both the steak and the quesadilla off the bill.

I asked for a manager and ended up speaking with the host because they said a manager wasn’t on site and they couldn’t give me a business email to contact. The host said he spoke with the manager and they said they’d offer 2 pasta dishes as their sincere apologies. I told him to not even bother, as 1) we have no plans on returning because of this poor experience , and 2) I’d have zero confidence they’d come out right even if we did.

2 wrong dishes, a displeased birthday girl (who all she wanted for her bday dinner was a steak…), and over an hour to get our food on a slow night….Very displeased with the response from management as well. If this was a Friday night at peak time, okay…understandable (ish). Or if it was one dish that they had made an error on and fixed after the first time, I’d understand and brush it off. But this was just overall a genuinely poor dining experience.

Definitely wouldn’t recommend, nor...

I made a reservation to have dinner with my family at this restaurant, and when we got there, they told me the table wasn’t ready yet but they could sit us outside on the porch for drinks while we wait for the table to open. We agreed, disappointed with my young children, and sat outside. Finally, 30 minutes later, the hostess (not a server) comes outside to take a drink order, no word on a table inside, and by that point, my kids were starving and were starting to get restless. I told her we would just stay at the outside table and order dinner, at that point. 10 minutes later she comes back with menus and we finally order 10 minutes after that. An hour later, we finally get an overcooked appetizer (still very limited server/hostess interaction). My kids were disappointed with the appetizer because it was overcooked and I was then super annoyed. We ended up taking our entrees home to-go because we continued to wait another 10 minutes after our appetizer and because of the overall amount of time we had to wait. Compiled with the disregard for our reservation, placed on the patio (with no other people) and lack of attention in general. Just awful. We saw several other tables sit after us inside, and receive food, before we even got our appetizer. Overall, this place has decent food but the service is extremely disappointing and definitely needs additional help and training. It’s also disappointing that reservations don’t seem to mean much and that the management doesn’t appear to know how to handle or accommodate a normal Saturday night dinner crowd. She had nothing to say that was of rational explanation. I don’t recommend families dining here, on a Saturday...