Tanglewood Grill's Fine Menu Spiced by Hunting Lodge Décor
BART RIPP
TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE
Douglas firs and utility poles make for billboards in Gig Harbor . The signs, tacked to trees and poles, urge you to sell your precious fill dirt, lose weight fast and earn $$$ at home. I've noticed small signs that show a fly-fishing rod and reel, a wicker creel and the words Tanglewood Grill. That sign advertises a new restaurant filling a family dining niche.
Tanglewood Grill offers a consistently good menu of American food and Northwest specials, a cozy space spruced up like a hunting lodge, and friendly service by a cheerful young staff.
Owner's Denny Driscoll and Ike Van Skike, partners in the Lobster Shops at Dash Point and on Ruston Way , plus Porter & Stouts in Lakewood , have tapped a vibrant market for reasonably priced family dining in Gig Harbor . They spent $400,000 renovating a failed restaurant called Jekyll & Hyde's.
They accumulated snowshoes, horse collars, crosscut saws and cross-country skis at garage sales and on eBay. Timber broker Ron Brookins of Dash Point, a neighbor of The Lobster Shop, crafted interior walls of fir and pine boards, stained a honey glow. They mounted a mighty moose head with a formidable rack over a stone fireplace in the entry. If you didn't glimpse the traffic outside, you'd think you were snowbound in a Cascades lodge near Mazama.
The Tanglewood name pays homage to a small island just off Fox Island . Entangles tree roots caused problems in clearing the island, also known as Hoska Island and Grave Island , in days before people paid for fill dirt.
With a distinctive name and a winning concept, Driscoll, Van Skike and Lobster Shop executive chef Jim Belisle strived to keep Tanglewood's menu modest and prices low. Breakfast is available only on Sunday mornings, though I would guess that Gig Harbor people sometimes eat breakfast on Saturdays. Hint.
Breakfast prices are low for a quality feed. Atkins dieters note: $12.95 buys a belly-busting platter of prime rib, bacon, sausage and two eggs, any style.
That should tide you over until lunch when burgers would make a good choice. Tanglewood serves ½ pound ground sirloin burgers from K&N Meats, a Renton wholesaler that provides top-quality beef to some of Puget Sound 's top steakhouses.
Burgers are named for Gig Harbor-area sports teams such as the Gig Harbor High School Tides ($6.75 for your basic charbroiled burger) and Peninsula High Seahawks ($7.25 for a burger slathered with a whiskey-honey sauce that is an acquired taste).
Burgers and sandwiches come with piles of potato chips made fresh to order. The potato chips are as good as our area's best version, at The Spar in Tacoma 's Old Town .
Tanglewood's lunch sandwiches are pretty good, especially the prime rib dip ($8.95), a turkey Philly melt ($7.95) on a formidable hoagie roll, and a grilled ham and smoked mozzarella ($7.95) on Italian bread. A sandwich and a cup of first-rate French onion soup ($4.50) make a fine lunch.
The dinner menu emphasizes steaks. Try the rib eye ($19.95) rubbed with rosemary and black peppercorns.
An alternative is a pork porterhouse ($15.95) sautéed with apple cider, brandy, shallots, sliced apple and veal demi-glaze.
Coconut-macadamia prawns ($13.95), a Lobster Shop favorite, are coated with chopped, roasted macadamia nuts and coconut flakes, then deep-fried. They come with a Cajun orange marmalade and a nice Thai chili sauce. Meat eaters who want some surf with their turf should note that an order of these prawns runs $2.50 each.
Fish eaters need more selection on this menu. There's a Pacific Salmon ($13.95) basted with garlic-vermouth butter and charbroiled. There's halibut and chips ($12.95), and oysters and chips ($11.95). I'd like to see Tanglewood offer fishing camp favorites such as pan-fried trout.
If you're still recovering from that hunter's breakfast last Sunday, Tanglewood's offers a nice list of appetizers for finger feeding. Try the onion rings ($4.95) of sweet, yellow onions soaked in buttermilk, dredged in seasoned flour and flash-fried. A reliable version of potato skins ($6.95) is half a potato filled with cheeses, scallions and bacon bits.
People on a date should try the garlic fries ($3.50). A pound of these very garlicky fries, seasoned with sprinkled Parmesan cheese, makes a true test of how much you really like this person.
Desserts are basics like banana split ($6.50 for a colossal portion), a chocolate brownie tower ($5.95) of Ghirardelli's double chocolate brownies baked with Reese's peanut butter cups, or a reliable apple crisp ($4.95) of sliced Granny Smith apples simmered in butter, cinnamon and pure vanilla, topped by an almond streusel crust.
All low-cal treats for you dieters. Only gained about nine pounds at one Tanglewood dinner.
Driscoll and Van Skike concocted a winning concept with Tanglewood Grill. I can see this restaurant expanding.
I enjoyed starting my diet and this new year by eating at Tanglewood. Good place. |
