Grit

Admirable concept but their reach may exceed their grasp. Lamb navarin for example was a generous portion of meat and a few vegetables over mashed potatoes and gravy. Served luke warm. Tasty enough at first but then something was lacking, maybe a bit more red wine in the sauce. Pork chops were cut very thin, a thicker slice would have made the price more palatable. Also served lukewarm. The chocolate mousse was awesome.

I’m not sure the food and service can get any better than what I experienced at Grit. WOW. The brined pork chop was the best I’ve had … Well, since my half century mind can ever recollect. It was just melt-​in-​your-​mouth delicious. The Brussels sprouts were equally buttery delicious (different than the current run-​of-​the-​mill balsamic and garlic braised) and I just LOVED the pickled veggie garnishes. Mac and cheese was a little watery and loose, I must admit. But, the other elements were so over the top, I couldn’t manage less than 5 stars.

I really enjoyed the food! My boyfriend got the lamb which was really good! I had the steak and fries which was excellent! The only issue was when My boyfriend ordered a drink from the bar, they took a long time to tell us they didn’t have the kind of Rum that was on the menu. It wasn’t busy at all and the girl who bar tends was mostly just hanging out behind the counter. The dessert was mediocre at best. Next time I will just order dinner!

Excellent food! All 4 dishes were top notch and I can’t wait to try the other ones on the menu. High quality food, but expect to spend more. Nice wine list.

I have eaten here at least 6 times now. Keep going back. The food is simple but fantastic. The service is top notch and I have nothing but good things to say!!! Keep it up.

I can’t really imagine where the few negative reviews of this place would come from. The food and service (we ate at the bar) were as good as many of the best we’ve had in Portland, SF, LA, etc. Miles above the other places in Eugene we tried on this trip. The amuse bouche, arancini with walnut pesto, winter citrus salad and lemon curd tart were unbelievable, and our cocktails were wonderful. The 4 course menu my husband had was fantastic. The seasonings/​flavors are subtle, so that the main ingredients from the farm are the star. If you like heavily salted/​spiced food maybe not your thing. But we walked out on a cloud.

Grit is a nice place with attentive service, but the prix fixe was underwhelming. It may vary greatly from menu to menu, which is why I’m not ready to write it off yet.
We had the prix fixe with wine pairings because it was a special occasion. Pours were not generous for the price, though the wines themselves were nice. Empty glasses and cleaned plates were whisked away promptly.
Salad: Some sort of root vegetable medley with Italian chicory. It was super, super bland and oily with a weird mix of flavors and unappealing red lettuce. D.
Soup: French onion. Rich, nice flavor, but weird choice to melt cheese on the bread and just drop it in. B.
Entrée: Lamb. Not as tender as I hoped, but ample and flavored nicely, albeit a bit heavy on the red wine. Chanterelles saved it. B-​.
Dessert: I forget the fancy name, but it was a cold, dense, and stale-​tasting chocolate chip muffin with a smear of rum fraiche on top. I complained and got $ 10 off, which I appreciated. Even so, F.
For a $ 55 (each) meal, I expect a few moments where my eyes roll back in my head and I wonder, «Why the hell can’t I cook like this?» At no point did I do or think these things, so I’m calling this a fail on the food side. The extra star is for service.

Awesome place! Amazing food, cocktails, and ambiance. My boyfriends White Russian tasted a little funny to him and they didn’t hesitate for a second to make it right. Also love that you can see what’s happening in the kitchen. Looking forward to going back and trying their four course menu with a wine pairing!

Excellent restaurant in the whitaker neighborhood. Awesome 4 course prefix menu for $ 35. Great staff, great service, great, great, great! Go check it out

I went here for my anniversary dinner on the suggestion of a friend and I think I found my new favorite place. Hands down this was the best meal I have had in town in a while and the flavors were well balanced. Seriously, if you want to impress your date, give this place a try. The décor is beautiful, the staff are super friendly, and they display a lot of their seasonal produce along the wall that separates you from the partially open kitchen. What’s even better is that they’ve got local beers on tap and local distilleries’ liquor in their mixed drinks.

The food was absolutely wonderful and our service was great for the most part until I found an ant in my food.
First, I was treated as if I put a live ant in my food! The ant being in my food is not a big deal at all. I feel either way it’s bound to happen at any place you eat at whether it be fast food or fine dining.
The way I was treated is more important to me out of anything. The server first addressed the issue to the kitchen and other staff making me feel EXTREMELY uncomfortable while they all looked at me and kept talking. Then he comes back with no apology and tries to explain to my partner and I that the food is organic blah blah etc
Even my partner had told me he could feel eyes glaring in the back of his head.
So, my recommendation to Grit is take your «too good for you» type attitude and go to California or something because I can guarantee you will get a lot of bad reviews especially from fellow Eugenians. I forgot to mention I still thanked them as me and my partner left and I didn’t even get a «have a good night» just a dull response. I won’t be back and that’s completely on the staff who were working and how you treated me just because I’m young & didn’t look worthy to you of good hospitality and service. Hm I guess it all goes back to don’t judge a book by its cover.

For a farm to table type restaurant with pretty high prices for Eugene ($ 25-​$ 35 /​entrée), this place gets nowhere close to the mark for what other Unilocalers have reviewed.
* Food is flavorless — lack of salt and just basic seasoning
* Food is undercooked — halibut was like string cheese. like I was reminded of Polly-​O. And the wild rice had no butter or seasoning.
* service is incredibly slow — got there at 8pm and received salad at 9pm and fish at 9:40pm. How does it take 1.5 hours to cook fish with wild rice and mushrooms? my buddy waited for a glass of wine for 30 minutes. A single glass.
* service was nowhere — we never once got our water’s refilled
Just not something you expect for a 3 person table that spent $ 140.

Got to Grit around 8pm. First was seated in a side room that had four tables. The lighting was terrible and actually got us feeling very tired. There was a giant piece of wood that separated our table from the main seating area, which dimmed the light even more, and just felt weird.
I placed an order for a glass of wine which the waitress didn’t put in the computer. I asked her for it 35 min later after we received our food, and she even remembered the wine type, but didn’t apologize or mention she forgot to put it in the system, so left us wondering what happened.
My friends both got fish which took 1.5 hrs to cook (how is that possible for fish?), and tasted flavorless and unseasoned. I got salad which was good, but fairly basic and soaked in oil.
We all left hungry and ended up at the tapas place Izakaya next door, which had watermelon radishes in my salad and delicious black sesame seeds… basically a lot more flair and service for ½ the price or less.
We never got asked about our food from our waitress and never had a water refill. For a $$$ restaurant in Eugene, we expected a lot more.
On a good note, the bartender was great!

The food would taste better if I did not have to breathe the awful smell of Ninkasi brewing beer. Good air is important for taste.

We wandering in to grit as we were passing through Eugene and has a delightful evening! We chose the 4 course prix fix meal with wine pairings and it was a slam dunk. We started with a garden-​fresh butter lettuce wedge with chopped egg and tomato vinaigrette, perfect on a humid summer night. Soon after came a peony pink gazpacho, tart and cool. The entrée, cauliflower gnocchi with pulled chicken and rich broth was the epitome of elevated comfort food. Our dessert was a Rosemary apricot tart that fielded a sweet, piquant, herbaceous with admirable skill.
All in all, the atmosphere of grit was elegant, welcoming, and authentic in Oregon style. I would highly recommend this restaurant for anyone looking to explore creative cuisine or impress a date or business prospect. Additionally, our server was appropriately attentive and ever informative.

Great meal, great atmosphere, and great service! Had the tenderloin and potatoes. Best steak I’ve had in a awhile! The Caesar salad was perfect!!!

Our party of 8 received flawless service on a busy Saturday night. One member of our group thought his dish wasn’t hot enough and the server whisked it away with an apology and even asked if she could comp him something to «snack on» while he waited. It’s unreasonable to expect perfection, but we do want the restaurant to own its mistakes and make them right. The Grit owners appear to embrace that notion.
The wine list isn’t extensive but reflects good choices at very reasonable mark-​ups. Their corkage fee is unusually low.
We ordered the charcuterie plate and it was large enough that everyone in our party had good tastes. Entrees ordered included sole, pork belly and lamb among others. The fish, in particular, received good reviews for its freshness and manner of presentation. Generally, everyone was very pleased with their meal.
Grit is an upscale experience in a comfortable setting with friendly and good-​humored servers and without any of the pretensions effected by some restaurants in this category. I hope they have a long run in Eugene.

SWANKY! I would not call us the swanky type of folk… but what a wonderful experience! When I feel like being spoiled, this is where you’ll find me.
My husband and I stopped in here on a Wednesday night for dinner. We arrived around 6 ish and were seated at the bar overlooking the kitchen. As they were pretty full with other dinners. In my opinion we had the best seats in the building. It was a lot of fun to watch the staff cook & plate. We were even acknowledge by the kitchen staff as we watched. They served us a special treat too. Crostini with spicy bean paste and cheese. It was presented beautifully with some oil & balsamic drizzled on the plate. We were impressed with the big flavor impact of such a simple item.
We had a very attentive waitress with a great sense of humor. She wasn’t extremely knowledgeable on the wine selection, but hey, neither are we! We all learned together and it was fun. We ordered a bottle of Upper Five 2012 Tempranillo. You can’t really go wrong with any wine in my opinion. The bottle was opened in front of us and properly served to my husband for his approval.
My husband and I share our meals every time we go out. I found the menu a little confusing. This is because some of the dishes offered seemed more like appetizers then a main dish. There were not any sections of the menu to indicate this either. Since we share our food, it didn’t really matter and we just ordered what sounded good. I had the fettuccine with milk braised pork shoulder and he ordered the dungeness hushpuppies. Each plate came out beautifully presented and was so tasty! We each ordered a dessert as well, I had the gingerbread cake with espresso ice cream, he had the cranberry crème brûlée. Both full of amazing flavor.
We had a great experience and would encourage you to go check it out for yourself. We had great service and didn’t have any excess wait times. Remember… swanky, we spent more money here then we would usually spend going out for a weeknight dinner but totally worth it!

My experience as a first-​time diner at Grit was amazing. They were fairly booked up, so my friend and I sat at the bar. The bartender was sweet and gracious, and served up some killer cocktails which were unique and make with good quality, fresh ingredients. The service the whole night was excellent and our dishes were paced very well so that we received our courses separate, within a decent length of time.
My friend and I shared their pre-​fixed menu, which is a steal at $ 35, along with two more appetizers. The execution of the dishes was clean, delicious, and precise-​seasoning was on point, neither of our two fried dishes were too greasy or heavy.
Now, just as a warning, if you have a few drinks and order heavy you’re going to get a 3-​digit bill for two people. Honestly, you get what you pay for.

It’s unfortunate for Grit that my review wasn’t written sooner. About six months ago, on a Friday night, Grit became my favorite restaurant in Eugene. I’d had some less-​than-​stellar moments and some great ones. But the sum total was very very good. Regrettably, the past two visits were so horrid they deserved their own Seinfeld episode… really.
My complaints are first about service, next about food. On my visit two weeks ago, The Man and I sank into Grit’s dining room hoping for a quick, light meal on one of those 95±degree summer days. We ordered the chef’s board and two salads. There were probably 8 – 10 other diners in the space. And it took three hours to finish our meal with a 1-​hour lag between courses and a 15 – 20 minute lag for all the other things servers or bussers are supposed to do. It was a school night, and we left tired and unsatisfied.
In spite of the fact that I’d seen potential for this kind of behavior before, I still held out hope. I returned to Grit the following week with a good friend for an early dinner at 5pm. She ordered the fixed four, I ordered the gazpacho and grilled romaine salad. We were still experiencing hot weather in Eugene.
So my soup and her app of tempura-​fried green beans arrive quickly. My soup was the weirdest gazpacho I’d ever seen. Oily, brackish broth of unidentifiable origin (e.g. veggie? chicken?) filled with large chunks of a small amount of zucchini, a large amount of onion, and unfortunately only two or three grape tomato halves. Call me crazy, but I only ate the tomatoes and zucchini and sent the rest back. The rest was a full bowl of onions swimming in icky broth.
So we wait for our salads. We wait, An Hour. What’s up? There were literally 10 staff people who we could see all standing around, «shovel leaners» so to speak. This includes the kitchen staff! We were seated at that one table right up near the counter and the cash-​out station. We could see it all. Even crazier? There were only six total people in the restaurant – inclusive of outside tables! Ah-​mazing.
Around 6:20 we get our salads. My romaine salad is dressed in oil or bacon grease, with blue cheese crumbles, but no vinegar or citrus or other element on the plate to balance things out. It’s terrible! I eat a few grape tomato halves and send that back too. We ask for the remainder of the fixed-​four items to be packed up to go. The spaghetti-​os (yup, third item) are sent out anyway and we share these because I’m starving. They were delicious. The fourth course is boxed up and we finally get to leave two hours later, barely.
The even sadder part about all this? I sent back two food items in their entirety and wasn’t asked what was wrong with them. They we’re both still on my bill. $ 21.50 for soup, salad, and lemonade. At least I drank the lemonade. I won’t be back.