If you’re considering dinner at Main Street Blues Room on a Friday night at 7, you probably don’t need a reservation. By 9:30, however, you can’t get near the place. This is not to say that the people of Grapevine eat late, but rather that Main Street Blues Room is bar first and restaurant second, despite its desire to be both things.
Owner Monika Guzman, wife of former Texas Rangers pitcher Jose Guzman, has plowed major cash and energy into the menu, service, and décor. With its dark blue walls, chandeliers, and vintage furniture, it feels like an Old West brothel, especially in the quieter back rooms, where you should head if you really are there to eat.
Servers gave the impression they’d been at least partially trained. But they’ve also been granted freedom of expression. Right on to individuality, but who wants to deal with, say, a waiter in a fedora? Good service is about me, not you.
The Southwestern menu seemed smart and ambitious, and the kitchen scored on basics, such as grilling a steak or a piece of fish. No complaints on the beef tenderloin appetizer, skewered and grilled. Hear, hear to the salmon topped with avocado.
Where things slipped were on sides, salads, nuances, details. One night’s Prime sirloin steak ($35, ouch) came with potato cakes so heavily doused with basil that they tasted like soap. Spinach salad had nice leaves, blue cheese, and bacon, but the “candied walnuts” wore a strange, woolly shroud of sugar dust.
Does any of this matter to the rippling, tippling swingles who hit the room on its second wind? You know the answer to that. Diners who want to be wowed just need to eat with a qualifier: it’s pretty good food for a bar. 814 S. Main St., Grapevine. 817-310-3211. $$-$$$ —T. G.
