A wine country restaurant that tries too hard.
Written: Oct 03 '06 (Updated Oct 03 '06)
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Pros: Serves Baily wine. Very tasty shrimp linguine. Location.
Cons: Pretentious menu, high prices, decor, elevator music, mediocre service.
The Bottom Line: Carol's has a pretentious menu, high prices, mediocre service, and a flawed ambiance. Its dishes are well-executed but lack pizzazz. Our lunch there was enjoyable but I expected more.
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| bkalafut's Full Review: Carol's Restaurant |
The decor at Carol's Restaurant (at Baily Winery in Temecula) is striking, and not in a good way. Its patio is done as a sort of Mediterranean pastiche with artificially aged surfaces and statues. The restauarnt website describes it as "medieval" but the feel is more like a theme park, with the effect completed by the elevator music playing on hidden faux-rock speakers on the patio, which made full relaxation impossible. For me, dining on a patio abutting the vineyards on a California spring day is enough; if Carol's Restaurant knew when to quit they'd have done so before they added the statues and the Kenny G.
Carol's does a little better job with the food than with the atmosphere; the dishes we had were balanced, without the culinary equivalent of an off-pitch alto sax thrown in. Add to that Baily's well-executed wines and you get the makings of an enjoyable albeit formulaic wine-country lunch.
Carol's, open for lunch only, serves salads, pasta, sandwiches, salmon, shrimp, and steak in what could be described as a somewhat trendy Mediterranean-inspired style. Prices are a bit inflated--expect to pay at least $11 per plate--and the menu's description of the food is equally immodest, with simple dishes being made to seem, at first reading, fancy.
I ordered the barbecued pork loin sandwich and a glass of Merlot on our visit; my companion had the "Shrimp Scampi Montage" (Montage being Baily's white blend), which paired perfectly with Baily's Dry Riesling.
Scampi properly refers to a type of shrimp (to someone who knows a bit of Italian, "shrimp scampi" is redundant) and not to a method of preparation. Theirs was shrimp in a garlicky wine sauce with cheese and tomato, served on linguine, a fantastically well-executed dish albeit one offering nothing unexpected.
The pork loin sandwich, while a good pairing with the Merlot, was inferior to what can be had from a neighborhood barbecue stand. Instead of cooking a tough cut slowly until it can be shredded, Carol's slices quick-cooking pork loin thin and drenches it with a "Cabernet Sauvignon Barbecue Sauce" virtually indistinguishable from the average bottled product. The sandwich wasn't bad at all, but I was expecting something special.
Service at Carol's was on par with that of a greasy-spoon, more enthusiastic than polished and not what I'd expect given the prices and the location. Given this, the slightly grating ambiance--the music really has to go!--and the mediocre (for the price) food, I wouldn't automatically go back to Carol's on my next visit to Temecula, but I wouldn't recommend against it, either. Whoever's in charge needs to relax, quit trying so hard for a certain image, and instead work on fundamentals. A vineyard location will bring people in but dishes without pizzazz won't lure them back and overdone ambiance may just drive them off.
Recommended:
Yes
Kid Friendliness: No
Vegetarian Friendly: Yes
Notes, Tips or Menu Recommendations Try the shrimp linguine with Baily Riesling, avoid the barbecue pork.
Wines offered by the glass are fresh, but given that Carol's is in a winery, that's to be expected. Merlot and Cabernet are both passable but whites here are better than reds and the rosé is world-class.
Best Suited For: Friends
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Epinions.com ID:
bkalafut
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 in Restaurants & Gourmet |
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Member: Bennett Kalafut
Location: Tucson, AZ, USA
Reviews written: 255
Trusted by: 42 members
About Me:
Stretching single molecules for fun and profit.
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