Tonight’s dinner was inspired by fellow foodie Lucas who indicated that Parker’s Prime was a steak house that could play with the “big boys”. He compared it favorably to one of our favorites—Sullivan’s. I will let you know my feelings about that as the review proceeds.
Parker’s Prime is part of the Win small chain of restaurants from the Main Line area—their other places include Thai Pepper and Mikado in Ardmore, Flavor in Wayne, Teikoku in Newtown Square and Azie in Media and Villanova. This is their 7th restaurant. I have not dined in any of the aforementioned restaurants before choosing Parker’s Prime.
We had an 8:00 reservation and were fairly surprised to see that the restaurant was almost empty—they do have a bar which is well partitioned from the restaurant and it sounded like there were some people in there, but there were only 7 parties dining during the time that we ate which is not good for any restaurant two weeks before Christmas.
We were seated immediately and I ordered the Parker’s Prime Salad which is their version of an Iceberg Lettuce Wedge with blue cheese dressing ($8). The wedge was served at the proper temperature and the dressing was good. I ordered the Ribeye 14 oz. steak as my entrée. The steak was served again at the proper temperature, but lacked in quality and was tough for a ribeye steak and lacked flavor. I ordered a side of sautéed mushrooms (included in the price), but the steak was served with garlic mashed potatoes instead which I pointed out to our server. The mushrooms took a while to come out as a result and I was about halfway through the steak when they arrived. I will say that Craig (our waiter) was very apologetic for the mishap. I ordered a side of creamed spinach also for tasting purposes to compare against many of our favored steakhouses. This spinach ($6) was interesting in that the cream of the spinach was very liquid-like in comparison to others that I have had. While the flavor was good, the liquid-like cream made the side seem strange.
One of my dining companions began the meal with the Onion Gratin soup—described on the menu as beef and chicken bouillon, baguette and gruyere. This soup was average at best and when asked by the maitre d’ after the appetizers had been served how we liked them, my partner gave a true opinion of the soup and this was deducted from the final bill. My other companion chose mac n cheese as his appetizer. This is described on the menu as elbow macaroni, cheddar béchamel and panko crumbs. The flavor of this was delicious, but an elbow macaroni is difficult to eat in comparison to other types of pasta used in serving mac n cheese in restaurants. Again, this Fat Foodie is interested in flavor, but ease of getting it into one’s mouth is still important!!
My companions had as main courses the 8 oz. Chilean Sea Bass and the 10 oz. Filet Mignon. With respect to the Chilean Sea Bass ($24), I thought it lacked flavor. This was served with a side of broccoli. The Fillet ($32) was served with a side of the garlic mashed potatoes and looked like a nice cut of meat for a 10 oz serving. Upon tasting the fillet, I found it to be rather dry for the medium rare temperature that it was served at.
For dessert, I chose the bread pudding with chocolate chips and a chocolate ganache. This was served almost too hot for a dessert item and was very average and rather heavy in nature. One of my companions had the Apple Crumble which included a scoop of vanilla gelato. The waiter had raved about this dessert, but I found it to be average. My other companion had the chocolate molten cake which seemed very commercial in nature, but was served with a nice scoop of banana gelato which was actually much better than the molten cake! All desserts were $8.
Dinner for 3 was around $145.00 before tip and I would tell you that I did not find any value here for that price. This restaurant is across from the popular Winner’s Circle Sports Bar and Grill in Edgemont and site of the old Roux 3 restaurant. As stated above also, if the restaurant is this empty on a night two weeks before Christmas, it doesn’t make this reviewer believe January can be very promising to this restaurant. While the restaurant is beautiful inside with a very contemporary design, it is rather expensive for what we had and overall not worthy of a great rating as a result. Fellow foodie Lucas will have to work his way up to the varsity review team for us to consider subsequent restaurants!
2 Brownies
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