The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Visit to Willoughby’s Original Roadhouse a mixed bag
Latest Willoughby restaurant with a version of that name feels stuck in transition
On Route 306, near the intersection of Interstate 90, there used to be a couple of local dining fixtures. At the point where Willoughby, Kirtland and Mentor all touch, there was a Dino’s and a Roadhouse.
If memory serves, the Roadhouse was at first a Brown Derby Roadhouse, then just Roadhouse. There was a fire at the place, if I recall correctly, and now a medical building sits upon the property. In the meantime, the Dino’s across the street closed.
Late last winter, the local ownership group of the Roadhouse opened a restaurant in the former Dino’s structure. That venture was called The Coach House Grill, and, from my understanding, was billed as a higher-end dining place. Sometime this summer, the Coach House sign was covered with one that reads “The Original Roadhouse,” as the ownership changed course and went back to its roadhouse roots.
To summarize, the space that held Dino’s, a longtime Italian restaurant, now holds the reborn iteration of the old Roadhouse. As someone with a nostalgic bent – I enjoyed both Dino’s and the Roadhouse – I had to check out the new place.
Well, it proved to be a very mixed bag.
The entryway is a little convoluted, as it was when it was Dino’s. When you walk in, there are doors to the right and left, the former of which logically seems to be a pathway to a banquet area. That direction appears to be still under construction, but entering to the left will take you to the bar and restaurant area.
It doesn’t appear the décor has changed much since it was Dino’s. There’s perhaps been some sprucing up, but it still felt like it did the last time I was there, which is to say its flavor leans toward now-outdated Italian restaurant. A few Western-themed art prints have been positioned at the entryway, and one near where we sat still had the cardboard triangles covering its corners as it leaned against a window. It just doesn’t feel much like a “roadhouse,” but to be fair, the conversion to the Roadhouse appears to still be in its early stages.
There’s entertainment on the weekends, and I’ve heard it can become quite lively. We, however, had errands nearby on a Tuesday evening, and it was a ghost town when we visited. Four people sat at the bar, and my wife, son and I were the only ones seated in the dining area. Our booth was next to a window that looked out over the deserted pool of the somewhat-connected Days Inn next door.
The menu does, indeed, appear to be the old Roadhouse menu – tavern-type favorites with a mix of steak entrees and some sandwiches. It comes across as a dialed-in, tried-and-true menu. It’s tough to argue with that choice.
We started with onion rings from the appetizer menu ($6.98), and they were very solid. They’re whiskeybattered and served with a chipotle sauce that was superb. We also were served complimentary rolls with a cinnamon butter that was pretty good.
My son has been on a wing kick lately, so he decided on the wings appetizer ($7.99) for his meal. He ate a few, but I was less than impressed with the presentation of them. They just had the look of pre-flavored frozen wings you can buy in a grocery freezer section. I tried one, and let’s just say there are better wing options in Lake County.
My wife’s grilled chicken salad ($9.98) was similar. The chicken was grilled, but it just didn’t look like a fresh-grilled chicken breast normally appears. Both of their chicken dishes had the appearance of pre-prepared chicken. Even if that wasn’t the case, it felt as though a better effort could have been made in terms of presentation. The house dressing that came with the salad was delicious, supplying a bit of contradiction to an otherwise average salad. It came across as a bit haphazard – taking care, or pride, in the dressing, while overlooking the meat of things.
I got the Roadhouse burger ($9.95), which was very good. It’s a half-pound of beef, made to order and served on a pretzel bun. It was cooked right to the medium I ordered, and the toppings that accompanied it certainly seemed fresh. It was the kind of burger that made me think I’d come back just for this burger. But the fries that came with it were just OK, again flirting with that line of “things I could cook at home in a residential oven,” which just added to my confusion of what to think of the place overall.
Further adding to that confusion was the fact our service was excellent. You could argue we could have been told about the $1.50 happy hour drafts before we ordered $3 Miller Lites in bottles, but that’s the only halfway legitimate complaint that can be made about the service. In fact, it seems the service is more aligned with the higherend concept than that of the drop-down Original Roadhouse theme.
In all, the Original Roadhouse feels like a place in flux. The décor and atmosphere seem like one thing, and the service and menu feel like they’re trying to come to grips with each other, even as the physical space doesn’t necessarily mesh with either. If you were to say, “The Roadhouse was a great place, and Dino’s was a great place, but I can’t see how you could combine the two,” you wouldn’t be wrong. Yet here we are.
Our visit being on a hohum Tuesday probably didn’t help matters, but the hope here would be that one true identity can be found. Reviews are based on one anonymous visit to the restaurant.