Review: Maverick Grill

Updated 5/29/2008: Got an anonymous troll that commented to this upset because I was so hard on the new restaurant in town. Only other thing they could come up with were some misspellings in the review itself (thanks, now fixed). The coward then suggested I go back in the fall. Actually, I was there just last week. Service was a touch better (no kids though) and the food was iffy at best. Two couples (friends) were there a week or so ago and left with the same impression. That said, I will take the anonymous haters advice and will give the place a try this fall. NOTE: this was originally posted on 02/21/2008.

Not sure what the folks at dmJuice.com saw at the new Maverick Grill in Urbandale, Iowa but I don’t think our experiences could be much further apart. They apparently had the red carpet treatment and while I understand that given they can provide some publicity, I was looking for just average. Low exceptions, huh?
In all I’d say it was pretty average. We saw a lot of what I’d consider first week jitters. My first question came as we ordered drinks and I asked if they had any happy hour specials. We were told happy hour was from 2pm-4pm. WTF? Knowing that couldn’t be right we questioned the waiter and he came back with a much better 4pm-6pm happy hour which didn’t apply to us since we weren’t at the bar (sigh). After taking our drink orders, our waiter came back with three *glasses* of water for our three girls. In the time we waited for him to bring out child-safe cups one of our girls spilled (Murphy’s Law, anyone?). There wasn’t any kids menus and it took one of the managers (or owners?) to walk by before the kids were offered the paper and crayons. We then ordered…a $5 grilled cheese for Maia and a $5 pasta dish for Lauryn. C’mon, I’m not the cheapest guy in the world but $5 for grilled cheese and pasta? My wife, Kate, ordered the Mahi-Mahi sandwich and I had the Bouillionbase, a seafood dish with shrimp, oysters and scallions with a base broth of some sort. Kate got the Mahi-Mahi dish served on a bed of rice, not the sandwich she ordered, though, Kate much preferred the “mistake” and I was satisfied with mine except I felt the $16 dollar price tag justified a bit bigger portion.

Bottom line is I don’t feel the Maverick Grill is meant to be a family joint. I don’t hate on them for that, some places need to cater to the kidless crowd but I was still disappointed since this place was so close to home (and on the way home from work). The inside of the place was well decorated and definitely doesn’t encourage frequenting by the blue-collar after work. Drink prices are a touch high minus the house cab I drank at $6.25 a glass. The upside is the menu has potential, some classic American dishes with a few surf-and-turf options. On a 5 star scale I’d give it a 2.5 but feel that a better waiter could have made it a 3 or better. The downside for them, though, is I don’t see my wife and I going there much. We’ll give them a few more weeks to work out the kinks and see how things change.