NVM Review

By Warren Rojas

Complacency, it would seem, is the last frayed thread keeping the aged Polo Grill from totally unraveling.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not so mind-blowlingly terrible as to warrant tacking an “abandon all hope, ye who enter here” placard outside the heavy wooden doors facing Route 1.

But both management and the overly forgiving regulars might want to warn newcomers that the restaurant is a mere shell of what it once was. And, let’s be totally honest, it wasn’t all that great to begin with.

Ralph Davis, owner of the local chainlet that controls RT’s, Warehouse Bar & Grill and The Wharf, had a hand in Polo Grill for nearly 20 years. He recalls adding Gunston’s—originally founded by the owner of neighboring American Bar-B-Que—to his budding restaurant portfolio in 1991, and says he quickly set about to rehabbing the interior and sprucing up the menu. The meant adding heartier fare and recycling some Southern-style favorites (she-crab soup, étouffée, jambalaya, pecan chicken) that flew out of the kitchens at his other properties.

Davis soon discovered that the locals weren’t too keen on modernization.

“When we opened, the menu was a little more ambitious. But we found that’s not what the folks down there wanted,” he says of the snapback experienced after that first, ill-fated renaissance. The kitchen eventually returned to more of a burgers- and bar snacks-mix, though a handful of Cajun dishes managed to survive the back-to-basics purge.

The business toddled along for another decade. But by the late 2000s, Davis was ready to refocus his efforts on his brightest stars.

And Polo Grill just wasn’t playing in the same ballpark.

“I didn’t want to put any more time or money into it,” Davis admits of his desire to pare down his hospitality holdings. The obvious need for another round of badly needed cosmetic surgery—“The décor was starting to look long in the tooth,” he suggests—and the arrival of some serious competition (Pane e Vino, Fireside Grill) convinced Davis it was time to divest.

That’s when serial restaurateur Mike Kiros came into the picture.

Kiros, who claims to have 40 years of restaurant experience under his belt, didn’t offer a cogent rationale for turning his back on his previous restaurant—he operated Primo Family Restaurant in Alexandria before moving onto Polo Grill in early 2008—just to seed parts of the same Mediterranean cuisine on another menu, other than muttering something to the effect that he was simply ready for “a new challenge.”

“We knew the restaurant before,” was all Kiros would say about the research and development he and partner Archie Zaro poured into the Polo Grill power grab.

The duo kept the same name and sprinkled some Greek/Italian mainstays in with the Cajun standards.

By all accounts, the place has been cruising on auto-pilot ever since.

Daily specials run the gamut, from spaghetti with meatballs to crab-stuffed flounder over rice to pecan-crusted chicken tucked into a bed of mashed potatoes and blanketed with Creole mustard. Meanwhile, no one cooking technique proves foolproof as evidenced by the disparate results among fried (seafood – good; steak – middling) and grilled (pork – decent; chicken – dull) fare.

The signature spanakopita is one of the few dishes that rises to the occasion every time. I came to depend on those twin wedges of nutrient-rich, sautéed spinach—threaded with egg and cheese, poured into flaky, buttery pastry dough and baked till to its fluffy finest—as comfort food. Particularly after I’d been burned by a seemingly never-ending succession of underwhelming dishes.

Take the chicken souvlaki (please). Whereas its porcine counterpart seems to adequately survive the grilling process—the skewered swine arrives at the table naked save from some striking grill marks (no discernible seasoning), its meat heated till pearl white but still relatively juicy—the cubed bird begs for liquid. Each bite of chicken proves arduous, the flame-licked flesh devoid of any moisture, and even worse, any real flavor.

The culinary neglect extends to the pasta dishes as well.

A sad tangle of noodles advertised as fettuccine alfredo is tragically under-sauced and bizarrely cheese-less (the one place that desperately needs the cover of excess butter and Parmesan chooses to show restraint in both categories). House lasagna is casually slopped onto a plate, effectively destabilizing an already tenuous arrangement so that the wiggly noodles, tomato-based ragout and melted mozzarella progressively slide away from one another as the meal progresses.

An Athenian omelet has no fight left in it. The eggs are greasy and limp. Overcooking robs the shaved gyro meat of any personality, leaving nothing but mournful strips of unforgivably tough and totally wan meat. And don’t even get me started on the deplorable home fries (soggy, bland blobs).

Jambalaya pasta, on the other hand, displays real spirit.

Each bowlful of penne is packed with plentiful rounds of savory smoked sausage, diced chicken breast and puffy little shrimp, all swimming in a vibrant broth (I was at least glad to see that the kitchen’s anti-dairy cheat stance extended to not going the lazy route and merely dousing the jambalaya in zesty cream sauce) predicated upon a reduction powered by chopped celery, onion and green pepper (the so-called Cajun trinity).

Frying up catfish is, apparently, as close as the kitchen comes to perfection. The fish-fry staple gets rolled in cornmeal before hitting the pan, a flavor-enhancing treatment that bestows a golden glow and pleasing crunch to each generously proportioned and flaky filet. Early birds get an extra crack at the feisty fish, as the same crunchy specimens serve as the base for eggs St. Charles. Instead of your basic Benedict platter, the kitchen tops the lightly breaded fish with poached eggs and citrusy Hollandaise. Granted, a few liberal splashes of traditional Tabasco made the dinner-for-breakfast creation that much better, but I’d order the unadulterated version again without reservation.

As he rose to leave, a fellow Polo Grill patron looked at his wife, shrugged and said, “This wasn’t bad.”

Sounds to me like you’ve broken another one’s spirits, Polo Grill.

Well played.