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Friday, April 21, 2000
Grandview takes great panes to please
Service, cuisine delight in restaurant with one of the best views in town
The new owners of the Grandview Restaurant have remade this business into one of Corpus Christi's premier downtown dining spots.
Located atop the Travelodge Hotel, the aptly named Grandview is one of the best places in town for a look at Corpus Christi Bay and Shoreline Boulevard. The floor-to-ceiling windows give every seat in the house a spectacular view, and on some mild days, the panes are opened to allow in a gentle breeze.
Tables are covered in white clothes, with candles offering a bit of class and blue napkins folded neatly in drinking glasses. The friendly and efficient staff seems to have found the perfect balance of prompt attention, but also letting you enjoy a conversation without constant interruption.
The lunch and dinner menus offer some of the same items - mostly seafood and steak - with a larger variety available in the evenings. Dinnertime specialties include the New Zealand rack of lamb crusted with cracked black pepper and a Cajun ribeye, a 20-ounce steak blackened and smothered with crawfish etoufee.
Relaxed atmosphere
We arrived for a visit recently as the sun was setting, and the live piano music and the soft light over the bay helped us relax.
We started with an appetizer that left us wanting more. Three jumbo coconut shrimp were coated in a crusty breading with sweet coconut. So big we had to cut them with a fork, these starters were excellent dipped in the accompanying mandarin marmalade sauce with a pineapple juice base.
The seafood and other entrees are served with a salad of mixed greens, green leaf lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes and baby carrots. We recommend the raspberry vinaigrette dressing, a light, fruity sauce that perked up the salad nicely.
For our entrées, we selected the Cajun ribeye and the Maryland crab cakes. The seafood taste of the etouffe poured over the blackened ribeye was a wonderful complement to the spicy, yet not-overpowering pepper coating. The blackening process sealed in the tender bone-in steak's juices well, and the smoky taste of the crawfish and the spicy beef made for a delightful blend.
The three crab cakes, though somewhat on the small side, had the right mixture of breading and crab meat. They were appropriately spicy; tender on the inside with a slight crunchy texture on the outside.
Exquisite presentation
Be sure to ask your waiter for the dessert selections of the day. We tried the key lime pie and a hazelnut chocolate torte. As with the other courses, the presentation was exquisite. Dollops of lime glaze and cream orbited the rim of the plate holding the large slice of pie, while a lacing of caramel with chocolate and bits of cream framed the torte.
Other offerings include bananas Foster (vanilla ice cream and bananas mixed with rum and banana liqueur) and coconut cream cake (a yellow cake topped with creamy white icing, coconut and orange slices).
Each course was beautifully presented, with carrot and parsley shavings decorating the rims of the plates. The only jarring note was the dinner rolls, which were cold and somewhat hard.
Still, we'll be back soon to try more items from this new menu.
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