Garlic John's Restaurant, Manchester Center, VT

Here's my first posting of a restaurant review. I've been wanting to do this for a long time and finally am making myself do it.

We decided to take Route 30 home from upstate NY on a Sunday evening, mid-October. I had remembered passing a 'Garlic' something restaurant so we kept our eyes open for it this time. We got there about 7PM and it wasn't busy. There are about 30 tables in the whole restaurant and about 7 were occupied.

When we walked in the front door, we were in a small lobby with the restaurant to the left and a small, quiet bar to the right. It was decorated with a lot of cianti bottles hanging from the ceiling and several bold paintings lit individually on the walls. The walls were treated to look like old-fashing stucco and there was a wall of windows (although, we couldn't see much at that time of night in the fall). It was a nice hushed ambiance that evening that made it very pleasant, candles on the table, very nice.

I actually was upset almost immediately because, even though it wasn't busy, we stood by the hostess station for several minutes before anyone even came to check on us. Then, one of the waitresses did come out to the hostess station, looked at us, and almost walked away. Then, she came to her senses, turned back and asked if we needed any help. We said 'yes, we'd like a table', then she went into gear. That gave me a bad feeling but that was the last bad feeling of the evening. Everything afterwards caused me to improve my feelings about this restaurant.

We were served some great bread, warm (bread should ALWAYS be served warm) and crusty with a nice tasty, soft inside. Perfect. There was olive oil on the table and when we asked if they had roasted garlic, they offered to sautee up some garlic for us, which they did at no extra charge. We also asked for extra bread later in the meal and it was brought out, at no extra charge. Good job!

We ordered an appetizer of Calamari. It had a weird coating on it, an unflavored cornmeal. It was cooked well and the accompaniments saved it. One was a very flavorful marinara sauce (which we kept to dunk the great bread in too) and a garlic mayonnaise which we also enjoyed.

The side salad that was included with the entrees was romaine lettuce and little bit of red lettuce, and carrots. We both opted for the house gorgonzola dressing but it disappointed. It was very bland, almost like eating sour cream on our salad.

Both of us ordered a different type of Colossal Raviolis. Roger's were from the menu: Colossal raviolis florentine, advertised as raviolis stuffed with spinach with a gorgonzolla sauce. Actually, the raviolis were stuffed with a cheese and light amount of spinach mixture over a bed of very tasty sauteed spinach, with a cream sauce. Roger enjoyed it.

I ordered a special for the night, advertised as raviolis stuffed with gorgonzolla and onions, topped with caramelized onions and a sage cream sauce. My raviolis were the same as Roger's, with a cheese sauce and dots of green (spinach?) and SMOTHERED in caramelized onions and a cream sauce. I love caramelized onions so I thoroughly enjoyed this.

We both saved half of our entrees for lunch the next day and to have room for some dessert. When I reheated mine, it was swimming in olive oil but I still enjoyed it.

Roger would have liked to have a cappuccino but was told the steamer was broken, so his choices were espresso or coffee. He says the coffee was good.

We wanted to try their key lime moussecake but it wasn't available. So we decided on the Raspberry Square. Good choice! It was a warm square of raspberry crisp, topped with vanilla ice cream, a side of WONDERFUL whipped cream, drizzled with raspberry sauce and a large sliced fresh strawberry. The whipped cream had a nice taste and we asked if it was flavored, and the waitress said it was just really fresh and vanilla-y.

The bathroom was clean and stocked.

Final rating (out of 5)
Restaurant(appearance, ambiance): 4
Service(hostess, waitress): 4
Food: 3 (half good, half not good)

Would I go back again? I wouldn't go out of my way to avoid this restaurant but I'll try another one first before coming back.