58 West — Restaurant in Logan

If you're a true foodie- not someone who just likes to dine, but reveres culinary expertise and food creativity- who happens to be in Logan, Ohio, you've probably already been here many times already. This restaurant almost slipped by me as a local mom who rarely drinks as I wrote it off as "wow, that place looks really fun if I were still in my 20s." I was in Columbus, but my phone thought I was home when I asked google "fine dining near me," and 58 West popped up with their menu. Wow.

Our first of 3 June dinners here, my spouse asked for steak sauce just before they served his steak. Because it's rural, beautiful Logan, and steak sauce has been necessary for any steak we've ordered within 12 miles for nearly two decades: asking was instinctual. Our jaws dropped when they served the steak. When the waiter brought back homemade (!) steak sauce, I relayed apologies for the chef for pre-criming that their steak might even need steak sauce. It was an incredible cut- perfectly trimmed, cooked & presented that tasted divine (at least my bite off his plate since I first ordered their exquisite strawberry fields salad, which left no regrets!).

I share this as a counterpoint to the unfortunate google review stars lost on 58 West by people complaining below of the lack of steak sauce. The homemade cup of steak sauce we recently received suggests a sincere attempt to resolve this criticism for the customer who needs the fix of a steak sauce. Which, by the way, was exceptional as well. But I implore you to pause and savor it without. Every chef knows a good steak stands on its own. Steak sauce is meant to hide flaws in the quality and/or preparation of the meat. These steaks had nothing to hide. 58 West gets our family's utmost respect as the best steakhouse in the city of Logan.

Yet the menu is way more than steak! It has something for everyone, which is impressive for a seasonal, curated menu: Vegan, vegetarian, carnivore, gluten free, allergies... everyone. And whatever you order, it's thoughtfully complex and simply marvelous. We've since gone back for special occasions and have collectively enjoyed the porkchop, diablo shrimp pasta special, scallops on grits, blackberry reduction over chicken and mashed potatoes. Appetizers of their deviled eggs, mushroom special (my son, the mushroom hater couldn't resist!), pork ribs... and their soups.

Oh, their soups! Can't believe they've been open 6 months and people aren't discussing these in the reviews yet. Their beer cheese is most respectable, but their soups of the day are just fun and truly reflect their creativity, the wisdom gained from diverse culinary experiences of their own, and high quality ingredients.

I echo their fantastic dessert menu reviews and the 58 West ambiance! A beautiful outdoor patio that is perfectly breezy to keep you cool and bug free with nice lighting. Not to mention the vibrant indoor ambiance we enjoyed tonight with a fabulous soundtrack.

They're still so new you can get a table immediately! No 90-180 minute typical local wait... for now. Although easy to get to, it's off the beaten path for tourists. Given there is truly something for everyone at 58 West, whether it's the fine dining, atmosphere, or fabulous drink reviews below, this hidden gem won't stay hidden for long. Make your...

With my other half having spent much of her career in the restaurant industry, I usually give restaraunts and their staff a lot of leeway. But sometimes a business needs to hear the truth, and in this case the Truth hurts. We entered to find the restaurant adorned with standard Gastropub styling's and were almost immediately seated. Looking over their menu we found it to be upscale, or at least trying to present itself as such, and it had the prices to match.

Starting off we ordered the Hot Honey BBQ pulled pork chips which normally comes covered in ricotta and beer cheese. With my being allergic to dairy, we asked the waitress to put both cheeses on the side so my wife could still enjoy them.

The chips came out relatively quickly and we were surprised to find them containing a laughable amount of pulled pork sitting on top. It seemed as though two or three spoonfuls was all they could spring for on a $16 appetizer. In addition, instead of putting the cheese on the side, they just left it out entirely. Resulting in us ordering a side of beer cheese, which was also underwhelming (quote from my wife: the texture was there, flavor was not)

While looking over the menu our ears were treated to the blood curdling yells from the kitchen. For some unknown reasons, the Kitchen's expo's primary form of communication was yelling like an infantryman that had just had a mortar round explode next to him. Thus was made doubly puzzling by the restaraunt using the Toast POS system and the relevant info being displayed on screens in the kitchen. I would assume the kitchen staff were capable of reading these instruction without Wish.com Gordon Ramsay screaming at them.

Our waitress returned and we ordered our food. I ordered the Italian burger well done and she ordered the 56 burger medium well. I explained again that I had a food allergy and asked if she could find out for me if the burger could be made safe for me (no cheese is obvious, but milk in the bun and butter on the grill are all concerns) she informed me would return with confirmation.

After a rather long period where we thought our waitress might have ghosted us, another staff member brought us our food. Meaning we had no choice but to hope this was a sign that it was safe for me to eat.

We started on our burgers, and I quickly realized that they took "well done" to mean "reduce the meat back to carbon atoms." The meat also had a strange kerosene flavor. My wife's burger also came out in the form of a hockey puck.

We paid for our meal and hoped to get a little adventure out of the trip by taking the self guided tour of their brewery and distillery. This proved to be a short hallway that had two small windows in it, and a third open space that had an employee sitting in while looking at his phone completely detached from reality.

All in all, it's not exactly what we had in mind for a nearly $80...

Food was just okay the first time we went, but we decided to give it another try. We really wanted this place to be good. The atmosphere is very pretty and the waitstaff are very nice. We started with the fried pickles. Those were really tasty and the beers we ordered were great.

My husband ordered the smash burger. The fries that came with the burger were fresh cut and delightful. The burger was just okay. (He said it reminded him of a burger you get at a county fair when they run out of cheese, lettuce, and tomato.)

There are a couple of vegetarian appetizers, two salads and one vegetarian dinner on the menu… so probably not the best option if you are a vegetarian. The one vegetarian dinner item that was listed was definitely one of the more expensive dinners you could order and made with the least expensive ingredients of any of the menu items listed (stuffed bell pepper for $22). I couldn’t tell if it was priced that way because it was the only vegetarian thing you could order or as a deterrent so you wouldn’t order it. I was hesitant to order it based on my previous experience, so I ended up ordering the pear/pomegranate salad.

The salad was (I don’t know how else to describe it) very….wet? I got it with the dressing on the side, so it wasn’t dressing. I guess I’m glad they rinsed the lettuce? Lettuce had slimy spoiling pieces mixed in and the pomegranate seeds were starting to turn brown from age. It wasn’t inedible, but it would have been a great salad if the ingredients had actually been fresh and not so soggy.

Dessert is really what sealed the deal for us. We got the blackberry “cobbler” which could only be called that because I guess that’s what the Duncan Hines box mix said on the outside. It was very reminiscent of grade school cafeteria/hospital food. We also got the crème brûlée, which probably would have been good had a food grade torch been used to melt the sugar, but unfortunately that was not the case. The sugar tasted like butane (or whatever the accelerant was to melt it). We could not get the oily, chemical taste of butane out of our mouths until we got home and had a shot of moonshine and brushed our teeth! The service was really great and our server asked how the desserts were. When I told her the problem with the crème brûlée she nicely said, “that’s too bad. I’m sorry you didn’t like it.” and did not offer to remove it from our check. We didn’t want to give her a hard time because they were so busy and she already seemed so harried, so we paid for it anyway.

Overall, it felt like we were in the food version of The Emperor’s New Clothes where everyone was silently agreeing to pretend the food lived up to the fine dining prices.

This is probably a nice place to stop for a fancy cocktail or a drink, but I cannot...