Wrought Iron Grill — Restaurant in Owosso

I recently visited the Wrought Iron Grill for the first time, and sadly I think it'll also be my last. While it's a fantastic looking place with a great environment and the staff are lovely, my experience with the food was unfortunately not great.

I was extremely impressed with the place overall - it's in a nice location right off the main road in Owosso, but also tucked back a bit from everything else, and the exterior and interior of the building positively reek with charm and ambiance. It feels much more upscale than you might first expect, which is great. Pretty sure it's the only place in the area like that.

I came in knowing what I was looking to try - the chicken penne pasta. Huge fan of chicken pasta dishes, and I was eager to see what their take on it would be. I ordered it with two chicken breasts, one grilled and one fried, so that I could try them both.

The order took about 10 minutes to come out (there were a handful of other diners present, so not too busy and not too slow), and when it arrived, I was very surprised to see that the pasta looked very congealed. This, sadly, was because it was congealed. And cold. Very cold. Not ice cold, but a few ticks below lukewarm. The grilled chicken breast was nearly as cold as the pasta, unfortunately, and the only thing that was hot was the fried chicken breast. I suspect what happened was that the pasta and grilled breast were done several minutes early, and instead of being kept warm, they were brought to me cold.

The taste of the pasta would have been very lovely if not for it being cold, and the flavor of both chicken breasts was excellent despite the temp issues with the grilled one, so I'm torn here. On one hand, sure, things happen, mistakes are made, and the food was quite good aside from the temperature. On the other hand... Wrought Iron seems to intentionally cultivate a higher-class, more sophisticated look/feel, so fumbling on something as simple as chicken pasta (if the back didn't notice the temp issue, surely the server could have caught it?) seems like an amateur move that just shouldn't have happened.

I WANT to go back because it's a great place with very nice people, but if I do, it probably won't be for quite a while. It's a shame, because whatever they did with their chicken, I want to have it again. Just... hot next...

Summary: decent restaurant with weak food quality management

I've heard a lot of good things about this restaurant and decided to visit with my wife and son. We came in early afternoon and were some of the only customers there. The inside was nicely decorated and had a good feel to it.

We were seated at a booth and given our menus. I chose the NY strip, my wife a Bleu cheese encrusted steak, and my son got a baked or broiled chicken. The food came out pretty quickly and it was hot and fresh.

My wife and son's meals were good, albeit plain. The execution on the dishes could've been stronger but the taste was decent and better than what I could've made myself. My NY strip was something else all together. There was a thick layer of gristle along the sides. Unchewable, hard gristle, not edible fat. The steak had a decent taste and was fresh but was a bit shy on flavor.

Now, the waiter we had was a nice guy as far as personality goes, but he never checked in with us throughout the meal. I waited a while after starting (and seeing all the gristle) and he was nowhere to be found, so I ate around it. We finished up and our waiter stopped by to check in. I showed him the pile of gristle which was easily 15-25% of the steak's total volume. He apologized and took the steak in back to show the chef, who sent his apologies and promised he would check all their remaining steaks to make sure they were cut well. The waiter offered to comp us a dessert but we declined (due to dietary restrictions). It was a nice gesture.

I've rewrote this review to give a more fair view of the three meals I experienced that day, and have increased my rating from 2 to 3. Given the experience, I have no doubt this place could be well worth the experience in a busy night, but my experience was questionable and left a lot to be desired in terms of expected quality and...

One star because I went for the food despite the service and atmosphere being great. I left a 20% tip yet hated the food. We didn’t complain about the food; we just wanted to finish our 3 hour drive to get home.

This is located between my home and my sister’s home. I saw a billboard when heading south on 52 so we decided to give it a shot. The first thing we noticed is they try to make it look like a fancy place because they “fancy up” each dish with different sauces, fancy names, etc. They also try to cover too broad of an array of things. They can’t get either the beef or the seafood right. They are a “jack of all trades, master of none.” They should try to master something. I had a super tough NY strip that was cooked to medium-rare as requested. My wife had a very fishy flavored lobster bisque. Lobster bisque isn’t supposed to be fishy flavored. We ordered the molten lava cake which was served with ice cream. It would have been great if they had chocolate sauce instead of trying to fancy it up with raspberry sauce that they don’t mention on the menu. Nearly $10 for a flop of a dessert.

We are from Toledo and are spoiled by a large array of quality restaurants. This place would never survive with the competition we have at home. They’re blessed to be in a small town with no competition which must keep the locals coming back. Their taste buds are obviously accustomed to poor quality. $106 for a meal and my wife said, “my KFC for lunch was better” after she was unable to eat her meal that we paid for. At that price, dinner bread served beforehand is the norm at each place we usually dine. They don’t do that here.

We will keep driving past every time we visit my sister’s family. Never again. “Fool me once,...