Benchmark Restaurant — Restaurant in Perrysburg

Try it once, you will see!

Food is great, drinks are great, service is great, really great. Not a bad restaurant

Here are some observations.

Great restaurant decor cost a lot of money. Between designers and architects, demo and construction, fixtures, permits, labor, change orders, etc. etc. the dollars can add up real fast. You simply wouldn't believe how much it costs just to OPEN a restaurant, let alone the overhead to run one.

It's really amazing that fine dining establishments can even survive in this region given the fact that they are really only seriously generating revenue for about 3 - 4 hours a day. Even during those few hours, most of these places are nowhere near capacity. Just take a tour of "fine dining" establishments in this area and you will see what I mean. Any given weekday for lunch or dinner it is very very rare to see these places above 40% occupied. It's not surprising given the fact that most of the people eating here (especially for dinner) view it as something of a treat... almost a special occasion, so they don't do it a lot. On top of that, in a town like Perrysburg doesn't have a huge population to begin with, so there just isn't a ton of people to draw from as a customer base.

So, how do they do it?

Well for starters, there is the Owens Illinois dorm building across the street, so there is a market of management types who are in town and this restaurant is nice and convenient. The real key though, is to keep expenses in line with what revenue and profits can support.

This is where the decor comes into play....

This restaurant did a good job with the interior decor. It hits the sweet spot of being reasonable given the type of profit that this space can generate.

However, it really isn't spectacular. For example, go to dinner here and sit in one of the booths. The table is huge. Literally huge. If you are sitting across the table from your date or wife it's like they are a mile away. The sconce lighting in those booths is sort of cheap... but nobody will notice because nobody in this area cares about stuff like that.

But look, this isn't New York or LA. If it was, this place would be sold out every night between 5 and 10 pm.

Anyway, I know many people who enjoy this restaurant a lot. If you haven't eaten here you should.

It would be nice if all area restaurants trained their wait staff as well as...

I have gone now twice. Once with my family and once with some coworkers. I have a hard time giving this place 2 stars but I did appreciate the overall ambiance and the staff were kind. This unfortunately is where my positivity ends. On my first trip I ordered the Lobster Bisque, Feta dip and 16oz Ribeye. My wife got a bowl of Lobster Bisque and filet. The Lobster Bisque was sweet and had no other real flavor outside of the lobster chunks but that was overpowered by the odd taste. I am sure but there are probably people that would enjoy that however we are not those people. I have had high end Lobster Bisque at Hyde Park in Columbus and lower price at Zoup and Rosie's in Maumee and Lamplight in Perrysburg. I prefer the Lobster Bisque at all of those locations over what I had here. My steak, for a $35+ ribeye a la carte, I expect a well cooked, prepared to temp requested steak. In this case medium, and the meat tender. The steak came out medium well to well and was tougher than I would have expected. The feta dip we had was the best part of the trip.

I am a fan of never judging a new place on first impressions so I gave this another shot when some coworkers had suggested Nagoya. We went here, this time the service was less impressive but by looking around it appeared that this might have just been our waiter. Everyone else seemed attended to. I tried the French Onion soup and the prime bone in ribeye Butcher's cut. The French onion soup was okay, I have ordered a bone in ribeye at Final Cut in the casino and it was beautiful. This was okay, the steak was more tender this time, still medium well to well but was also full of chewy fat. When you order a prime ribeye you expect a certain amount of fat due to the marbled meat. I was not however expecting the big clumps of fat that you would normally see in a USDA Choice or Select steak. Everyone in my work party were also uninspired by the visit and wished that they had gone to Nagoya. I will most likely give them another shot in a few months to see if they improve because I am a huge fan of locally owned restaurants and Perrysburg has a big need for a mid-high end steakhouse and they have potential. I look forward to giving them a better review in...

Overall the experience was very underwhelming.

To start the service was very disappointing. Our server was borderline rude the entire evening. The restaurant was probably only 1/3 to 1/2 full and despite this we had to flag our server down virtually any time we needed a refill or anything else. When our food was brought out it was placed on the table and the server disappeared not even checking to see how everything came out.

Which brings me to my second complaint. The food was, on the whole, subpar at best. My wife ordered the salmon and when it came out it was close to raw. She had taken one bite off then corner when we noticed the problem. When we brought attention to this, the server acted as she was inconvenienced by the problem. They took the plate away and no more than 5 minutes later brought back the same piece of salmon still close to being raw. I am honestly not sure they did anything other than place sauce back on it. The only other thing I can think is that they took a piece of meat that had been at the table and had a piece eaten from it back on the grill (which I'm fairly sure is a health code violation). Needless to say the fish came back out the same way the second time (close to raw). We again showed the server as well as the manager the problem and the only response was "we can send it back again to cook it a little longe". My son ordered the NY strip medium rare. The sear on it was so overdone that the steak was crunchy on the outside. The only saving grace of the meal was the side items (roasted potatoes, twice baked potato, steamed green beans and grits with maple bacon).

I was also disappointed in the restaurant itself. For what is held out as a more upscale dining experience I almost felt like I was sitting in a diner. The restaurant was at best half full and despite this it was very loud to the point it was difficult to carry on conversation at the table. Even the table seemed cheap, no table cloth, etc.

I usually go to Toledo when I am going for more upscale dining (Final cut, Chop House, etc) and was hopeful that Benchmark would live up to its name. Unfortunately, this was not the case. This will be my first and last time...