Grill One Eleven — Restaurant in Rockford

I am very displeased with my first and only experience with this restaurant. My wife and I received a gift card for Grill 111 from a kind relative for Christmas that said the food and service is top notch and we would be nothing but impressed. We typically dine at The Rogue River Tavern, and after reading the beautiful menu at Grill 111, we anticipated an equally impressive meal. My wife and I placed a carryout lunch order for 2 of their prime-rib sandwiches along with an order of their root vegetable chips with dill dipping sauce and a bowl of french onion soup.

About 20 minutes later, we arrived at the restaurant and my wife went in to pickup the order. She says she first noticed how lovely the inside of the place looked. As she waited for the order to be put together, she noticed a server run his hands through his hair 3 or 4 times in front of her, and then the cook asked him if he could grab some fresh basil. With the same dirty hands that he just ran through his oily hair, he then grabs the fresh basil and then passes it straight to the cook. She then nauseatingly wondered exactly how sanitary the food handling practices were in the kitchen if that's what a server was willing to do in front of a guest.

The food smelled fantastic in the car and I was as excited as a kid on Christmas to dig in when we got home, but when we actually got home, my excitement quickly turned to disappointment.

The asiago bread that was requested on both of our prime rib sandwiches was hard and stale. My wife actually tapped the end on our wooden dining room table and it sounded like someone was knocking on our front door. Maybe that's a new french culinary technique I'm unaware of? The prime rib was also overcooked and very tough / dry. Fortunately they were kind enough to under fill our Au Jus containers to just 1/4 full, so there was barely even anything juicy to dunk the stale bread and overcooked prime rib in to make the sandwich more bearable to eat. Even Arby's does not short you on Au Jus, so why does Grill 111? There's simply no excuse for this kind of quality control at a fine dining restaurant. STRIKE 1!

Moving on to the fried root vegetable chips and dill dip... I can't actually tell you how the root vegetable chips and dill dip was, because neither my wife or I received the dill dip that was ordered and paid for. STRIKE 2!

Let's talk french onion soup! My french onion soup for $5.79 was the most pathetic soup I have ever seen that came out of a restaurant's kitchen. I paid for french onion soup, but I most certainly did not receive anything that resembled or tasted like french onion soup. It looked like they just took some hot flavorless Au Jus (basically brown water) then poured it on top of some cheese, and tossed 3 croutons on top. STRIKE 3!

If your restaurant plans to sell french onion soup in the future, I suggest your cooks actually learn how to prepare it. Otherwise you can simply take it off the menu. I wouldn't want you to embarrass your establishment's level of intelligence in front of another customer the same way you've so generously done for my wife and I. There were so many problems with our rather simple order, I simply couldn't imagine patronizing this establishment for another try for any reason. We will never be back to use the remainder of our gift card and I would suggest hungry patrons checkout any of the other fine(r) dining establishments in the area.

Date...

The food and drinks were fabulous! We had the truffle fries, I had the lobster mac, and my boyfriend had the stroganoff. I had a glass of shiraz and he had one of the seasonal IPAs. The waitress, she was terrible. She checked on us one time to make sure everything was to our liking, then disappeared for about twenty minutes. We had empty plates and were out of drinks for quite awhile. They were not busy at all. When we went to leave, finally, we found her standing by the expo window talking to the cooks. I also realized when we walked down stairs the only customers were us and two other tables. The bar was full, but she doesn't have to tend to those guests. The only reason why I'm not eating my experience lower is because I know it was just a bad server. My friend cooks there, I know they are a quality business. It's just too bad we had to have this experience on...

I was there recently with my wife, young son, and another couple. We waited 20 minutes for the server to take our order. We waited another 45 minutes for our food and when it arrived we all laughed that the portions were so small that we would burn the calories walking back to the car. The 3 street tacos entree ($17) I ordered would fit in the palm of my average sized hand and it was not presented as advertised, different sauce no guac. My friends wife ordered a salad ($14) and they brought out 3 leaves of lettuce (uncut) with some dressing on the side. My son ordered a burger from the kids menu and it was the same size as my wife's mushroom burger entree. I spent over $120 (with no drinks) and left hungry. I'm 5'8 160 lbs. lol. Try the Rockford Brewing Co or 3rd Nature. Food portions and quality are better at both...