Black Point Grill

We dined here on the evening of October 9th, having rented a vacation house at The Sea Ranch, we made a reservation well in advance. Apparently, the place was swamped with walk-ins, so we were told to wait in the bar (and didn't even get a drink) at the time of our reservation.  When we were finally seated at a table (and not the table we had requested earlier in the day), we continued to wait quite some time to get a $70 bottle of wine we ordered. It took them a while to find the bottle, then it apparently wasn't chilled so they had to do that. Eventually, i told the server to not bring anything else (the appetizers had already arrived).  Fairly amateur stuff that shouldn't happen at a place purporting to offer fine dining. The food was uninspired and below average.   We both had Point Reyes oysters which arrived luke warm (should have been ice cold) and the next day we both felt a bit bloated.  I suspect the oysters were on the verge of spoiling.  The beef tenderloin main dish was ok but nothing special.  The view was fine but not as nice as from the house we'd rented, although hard to enjoy, since we thought there was a herd of elephants in the room as one (of the two) servers stormed around in what sounded like heavy work boots all evening. There's not much else around, so it's somewhat of a captive audience at the Sea Ranch.  However, this really should have been much better than it was.

We have had a couple nice lunches here. The decor, service, views and food are splendid. This may be your best bet in the Sea Ranch area, particularly for the fine dining aspects such as service and wine list but also the stunning setting and historic architecture.

Today we enjoyed sandwiches and drinks. Warm turkey breast with blue cheese was excellent with Pinot Noire grape juice. I had warm portobello mushroom veggie club with amber ale. We were both a bit put off by the not quite crisp homemade potato chips. Finished with coffee and chocolate sour cream coffee cake which was tasty but not as moist as it cold have been. The cream for coffee came in a dirty vessel which the waitress quickly addressed.

Prices seem modest - under $20 each for lunch. We will be back. Would be fun to go with a group for dinner.

I think I have about a 50% chance of having food poisoning from this place, and even a small chance of not surviving the week...

My wife and I ate here for a late lunch today. We were starving and the menu seemed appetizing enough, so we decided to eat here. There was only one other table of customers in the restaurant at the time, maybe that should have been our first sign.

With only one other table of people (who already got their food), we figured the service would be great! It wasn't! We literally waited a half hour to have our orders taken in this empty restaurant. When that finally happened, my wife and I both ordered the grilled cheese caramelized onion sandwich. It came with soup so I ordered the clam chowder and my wife ordered the tomato. Luckily, we both ended up being served the tomato soup; I say luckily since I feel that if I ate seafood from this place I would have no chance of survival. We also ordered a side of sweet potato fries to share, which we expected to get first as it was an appetizer, but it came last after we had already finished our entrees.

1.     The sandwich was cold. It was bread toasted in a toaster with cold cheese inside. Then I think they put several day old french onion soup inside the sandwich to melt the cheese, unfortunately that didn't work because everything was room temperature from the get go. For all I know it had been sitting on the counter breeding bacteria all day. The onions were way too sweet, so sweet that I couldn't taste anything else but sugar while eating it.

2.     My soup was cold and curdled, but my wife's was hot... What gives? The soup was tasteless, and the texture was off.

3.     The sweet potato fries, I suspect, were also days old. They were cold and mushy in the middle, and they seemed like they were old and slimy before even getting fried.

4.     The "sauce" that came with the fries was.... it was.... um.... It had no flavor at all. When the waitress finally came by I asked her what the sauce was, and she said:

"I don't know exactly what is in it, it looks like a mayonnaise or something. But it has tarragon in it for sure, because tarragon goes good with squash."

Well, I am not sure if this is news for her, but last time I checked we did not have any squash on the table, nor was there squash on the lunch menu. Overall, the "sauce" was at least a couple day old yellow, chunky, warm mayonnaise with brown dried tarragon flakes in it.

I surprised myself today, in the sense that I cannot believe that I actually ate this food, and I most likely will be paying for it tomorrow (I already paid too much for it today). This is also the first time that I left a 0% tip, and I don't regret that.

Please, for the sake of your loved ones, do not eat at this restaurant!!