I went to Miller’s Guild in downtown Seattle, a restaurant known for its huge wood-fired grill, recently. It was my second time back at the restaurant after coming here last September. Unfortunately, I think I liked it more the first time around as the signature thick slabs of steak were not as tender as I’d anticipated.
The sides were, in my opinion, the best part of our meal. From my first visit, we really liked the grilled Romaine lettuce salad (which is tasty as it’s dressed with halibut cheeks, pancetta and a lemon basil dressing) and the scallops. We didn’t try the thick cut meat at that time. Miller’s Guild also serves smaller individual portions of steak, so perhaps this would have been the better option for us this second time around as well.
Besides the scallops and the salad, which were still good, we had the ash roasted beets and watercress salad, the curry roasted cauliflower, grilled artichoke, grilled asparagus and the gruyere mash potatoes. Being a bunch of ladies, we were big on the greens. The first time I came, Miller’s Guild had the best brussels sprouts I’ve every had (it’s not one of my favorite vegetables). Unfortunately, it wasn’t on the menu this season.
The steak was a 90-day dry aged bone-in Niman ranch ribeye – a huge 43 oz slab. Miller’s Guild cuts this thickly – around two inches. Unfortunately, this ribeye wasn’t as tender as I hoped it would be. I think I would have liked a standard cut better as I think the flavors from the grilling would have permeated more.
The dessert was very good – an ice cream sandwich made of oatmeal cocoa nib cookies and chocolate malted crunch ice cream (our selection). We added hot fudge sauce to it.
Overall, I think I’d stick to the seafood and sides at Miller’s Guild and leave steaks to dedicated steakhouse restaurants such as the Metropolitan Grill. The service was good – knowledgeable and not pushy. Perhaps my one complaint was that the meats were not as hot as I would have liked when they got to our table. We had a bottle of the LIOCO Indica Rosé which is from California and a 2010 Conterno Fantino Barolo. The latter drank nicely and went well with our food. The former was refreshing but there are much better European Rosé wines at the same value point I had elsewhere.
Outside of the Barolo, the big ticket item for us was the steak (USD146). Otherwise, pricing is generally reasonable for the quality and portion. Most of the sides and dessert were around USD9 and the romaine hearts was USD19. More menu details are available on the Miller’s Guild website .
Miller’s Guild website: http://millersguild.com