Plaza Grill Clayton - Visited July 2012

Today is another blisteringly hot Saturday in St. Louis and it was time to go out to lunch again. My daughter and her friend had been to a place they liked in Clayton, so we thought we would all go there together to see what we thought. The restaurant is the Plaza Grill at the Crowne Plaza Hotel at Carondelet and Bemiston.

The restaurant can be entered from either Carondelet or Bemiston and had plenty of seats and a bunch of flat screen HDTV's where they were showing the Boston Red Sox being soundly beaten by the dreaded Yankees. That is never a good sign, but at least is was nice and cool and since it was Saturday street parking was free. We ended up sitting in a large comfortable booth where we overlooked Bemiston where our minivan was happily sitting in the shade of the building. Their menu is fairly interesting for a Bar & Grill place and I had to decide whether I wanted the Corned Beef Reuben, the Spicy Buffalo Chicken sandwich, the Cajun Seafood Pasta or the Seafood Tacos. The others with me ordered either a burger or the club sandwich, and we also ordered some potato skins as an appetizer.

The service was a bit slow as there were quite a few customers and it took a while for our potato skins to arrive. We were a little disappointed that there were 5 skins and 6 people, so two of us had to share. But luckily the potato skins were quite good, hot and meaty with plenty of toppings and sour cream to add on top as well. We then had to wait a bit longer for the rest of our food to show up. Unfortunately they completely mixed up the 3 burger orders and they had to redo them. One of our party requires a gluten free diet, and they put her burger patty on a bun, and mixed up cheeses and toppings and included some jalapenos that nobody wanted. We are not sure if it was the fault of our waitress or the cook, but it did slow down our meal even further.

My fish tacos were fine, however, which shows it is sometimes good to pick the weird dish! The food itself was pretty good, with generous portions and good and messy food (I like messy food!) My wife was also surprised that the club sandwich was on Texas Toast that was not toasted (which made it somewhat mushy). You would think they would toast Texas Toast! She was also surprised her sandwich came with seasoned fries, since on the menu it says the fries are seasoned with the burgers, but not with the sandwiches. I think they ran out of room when they were printing up the menu.

When my daughter had been here before they had the Ciabatta Chicken sandwich and the Atlantic Salmon and said both of those were very good and they also had much better service with a very good waiter named Michael. They were a bit disappointed the service this time seemed so poor, especially when the food was actually not too bad. We did have a "frequent diner" card for there, so we may have to try them again and give it another shot. That way I can have the Reuben and French Onion Soup!