House on the Hill, still yummy

When my mom was in town, we took her to enjoy House on the Hill for a meal generously sponsored by my dad (thanks, Dad!). This was after an exhausting morning spent at Stone Brew for their anniversary celebration, but we still had to eat dinner.

It was Saturday, but it was also pretty early, so I didn’t bother calling for a reservation. When we got there, they had only been open for a half an hour and we were the second table to be seated. As always, you start off with their housemade cheese spread and some crackers. It’s a good starter, but I always look forward to the freshly warmed sourdough and butter. There were a lot of things on the menu I wanted to try and I considered getting the halibut again because I remembered it to be moist and really good. The pork prime rib also looked like an interesting option.

We ended up ordering the stuffed mushrooms as an appetizer. We almost got the appetizer sampler, but I didn’t like the calamari and T didn’t really care for the crab cakes, so that defeated the purpose. The stuffed mushrooms, though, were very good. I think it’s the cream cheese that makes it so tasty. For dinner, my mom ordered the halibut, T got the garlic shrimp, and I ordered scallops florentine. We’ll have to go back for the pork prime rib.

The halibut was, once again, moist and flaky and covered in their lemon caper sauce. It’s a good choice and they prepare the fish well. My scallops were nicely cooked and not overdone and sat on a bed of linguini and a creamy spinach sauce. Had I been hungrier and without a headache, I probably would have eaten it all. It was good enough that we finished off the scallops and I took the rest of the pasta and sauce home. The garlic shrimp came with linguini in a butter sauce that tasted like it had something else in it… sherry, perhaps? Again, the menu is certainly not cheap but you get great food for the prices. The entrees are around $20-25 and they do come with soup or a salad.

As good as the entrees are, I wouldn’t recommend having dessert here. The dessert tray had different items than our last visit, but you can tell they are not made at the restaurant. They’re not bad, they’re just not very good. We brought home a slice of carrot cake to eat while we watched Premonition (I’m undecided on whether I liked it… I think I just didn’t understand the point of the movie) and between the 3 of us only got through half of the slice. There’s still a small piece left in the fridge. If it had been really good, I think we would have polished it off.

If you get on their e-mail list, they send out coupons for $10 off dinner for two, or $5 off lunch for two. Or, if you just mention the coupon to your server, they’ll take the $10 off the bill. That’s pretty cool and it certainly helps with the price. Since I’m not crazy about the appetizers or desserts, I’d be happy to go just for an entree and $10 off our bill makes the prices much more reasonable.