Hot Box Grill: American Cuisine

Hot Box Grill

18350 Sonoma Highway

Sonoma, California 95476

http://www.hotboxgrill.com/sonoma-county-restaurant.html

This American style restaurant is a small, quaint joint in Sonoma. This small restaurant's management had just changed, and it seems like managing a packed restaurant it not something they manage well. We started to night off with a 2013 David Noyes Pinot Noir Rose. It was a nice crisp wine that would of gone well with our meal.

We ended up waiting over an hour after we order for our meal. It was a very slow service and were running out of food items quickly. There was two, hard working chefs with about eight tables in the restaurant with two big tops including us. The food did not seem too complicated, but the servers and expediting was not going smoothly.

Some of the items that we ordered was to the left an American staple, Deviled Eggs. It was kicked up a notch with Parmesan cheese and chopped up pieces of bacon. In the middle was a Roasted Beet Salad, it was lightly marinated with a citrus vinaigrette and was dressed with shaven fennel, grapefruit, and toasted pistachios. It was light and earthy start before the main course. One of the main courses ordered was the Petrale sole which is a flat, delicate, white flesh fish. It was served on lemon beurre blanc sauce and basmati rice. The sauce consisted of white wine, butter, and lemon which made the fish taste fresh and rich. Presentation for the dishes were very nice and tasted satisfying.

The other main courses, we ordered was the Western burger which was a 7 oz ground beef patty with cheddar, restaurant made barbecue sauce, shoe string fried onions, and malt vinegar aioli. The burger itself was very rich and hearty, but it was suppose to be served with duck fat fried French fries. It was never on the plate when served though. To make it worse, they never told us when they ran out of the fries until I had asked about them. We waited over an hour which was already for the food itself which way too long then they ran out of food with no updates to the customers. To substitute for the missing fries was an under seasoned "Semi-spicy mac n cheese". It was nice and hot, but the mac n cheese needed salt.

The last main dish that we ordered was Chicken Paillard which pounded, thin chicken grilled. It was severed with fingerling potatoes, baby artichokes, and a caper sauce. The chicken itself was very dry, but it was the only dish that had the right amount of salt.

All in all, I would not recommend this place unless they operate the kitchen better. The service was way too slow and majority of the dishes were under salted. Coming from a person that does not like much salt and not trying to insult the chef, I had to salt all but one of the dishes.They have some things that need to be worked on before they can keep continuous customers.

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