Normally, the success of a restaurant depends in large part on its location. A nice view, pleasant outdoor seating, and a sense of destination can help smooth out otherwise rough edges, leaving you with an overall sense of enjoyment, even excitement, about your meal. Triphammer Grill in High Falls definitely has location sewn up. In fair weather, the restaurant's deck provides a breathtaking view of the falls, and a mist-softened panorama of downtown.
Open since 1993, Triphammer Grill is one of the established institutions in High Falls, and it has developed a fairly good reputation over time. Under owner Jennifer Powers and Chef Daniel Peck (who has worked at Triphammer since 1998, and has been executive chef for the past two years), the restaurant strives to produce "unforgettable service, exceptional food and comfort in an unpretentious atmosphere." The service was certainly unforgettable. On our first visit on a recent Saturday night, we were shown to a table near the windows, and then we waited a very long time for our waiter to appear. The dining room was sparsely populated. Servers were lined up near the end of the bar, but no one came to see us for quite a while.
When our waiter did arrive, he did not know his beer and wine list, couldn't answer a cocktail question without a long consultation with the bar, and seemed completely nonplussed that we wanted to order appetizers and then take a few minutes to think about entrees. He consistently overlooked nearly empty water and wine glasses. The wait between courses stretched from leisurely to a bit disquieting. Nonetheless, we were able to settle back and enjoy the pleasantly dim, even clubby atmosphere, watching the city shade from day to night in an agreeable way. I wish I could say that the service improved on a subsequent visit, but it did not.
Chef Peck's eclectic menu encompasses brasserie classics and pan-Asian cuisine, with Italian and Portuguese dishes thrown in for good measure. The results range from very good to disappointing. The best of the appetizers was the one that was meddled with least. The Public Market cheese board ($12) offered a wedge of reggiano parmesan, a creamy and robust stilton, and a half-round of cheese we were told was "aged brie" (it was actually a very good goat cheese) along with an antipasti of marinated and thinly sliced sausage, housemade herb crackers, and rounds of toasted baguette. This very nice appetizer might even make a tasty dessert if the sausage was switched out with fresh fruit or a compote.
The poke tuna salad (the chef's version of a Hawaiian staple, $12) combined honey-sesame marinated cubes of tuna with scallion, diced cucumber, diced avocado, and pickled ginger. Served in a chilled martini glass with a wonton crisp, it was a pretty presentation, with a good balance between spicy ginger, fatty avocado, and cool cucumber along with an undercurrent of sesame. The fish, bright pink cubes of it, didn't add the meaty, briny taste of good tuna that I was expecting. Beer-broth mussels, steamed with bacon, onion, garlic and parsley and Genesee Cream Ale, were shrunken in their shells and a bit fishy tasting rather than plump and briny ($10). The broth had a very aggressive beery flavor, but very little in the way of bacony goodness, aromatic herbs, or garlic.
Many high-end restaurants in Rochester offer a calamari salad ($10). But where the calamari elsewhere is perfectly crisp, here its was a bit flabby, and the salad too wet and busy - incorporating kalamata olives, grape tomatoes, banana peppers, and asiago cheese - to act as anything but a mask to the flavor of the squid.
The entrees were hit or miss. Steak is a safe choice at Triphammer Grill, and the bone-in 16 oz. rib-eye ($24) is entirely satisfying. Beefy and juicy with a near-perfect crust, it comes with a spicy green chimichurri sauce and marinated tomatoes that work well together. The chilled fingerling potato salad absorbed all the disparate flavors, making them far more interesting than they would have been alone. Pan-seared ahi tuna ($21) was a bit disappointing. The tuna steak was crusted with a spice mixture that was incredibly heavy on peppercorns, and the fish itself had the same curiously pink color and spongy texture as the poke appetizer. On a second visit, the fish had the deep red, muscular look of good tuna, but the spices still blotted out everything but the texture. The salad on which the meat perched was undistinguished.
The much-touted Portuguese Caldeirada ($27) seemed to have been made with the same broth as the beer mussels. Bits of potato, a loose chorizo, and cilantro rounded out the mussels, clams, shrimp, and scallops, but the final flavor of the dish was simply brown, salty, and fishy, with a tiny hint of spice.
Lunch at Triphammer is both disappointing and expensive. Both the BLT ($9) and the jerk chicken ($9) sandwiches were served with overripe fruit and gummy pasta salad. The BLT substituted mesclun mix for crispy lettuce, added fresh mozzarella, and used a pesto mayonnaise instead of the unadulterated version. The result was a confused mess of tastes packed into a jaw-breakingly huge sandwich that barely held together. And it wasn't really a BLT. The jerk chicken had to be disassembled to eat. The predominant flavors in the shredded chicken were salt and thyme. There was none of the depth of heat or savor that I associate with good jerk.
Triphammer Grill
60 Browns Race
262-2700, thetriphammergrill.com
Lunch Mon-Fri 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; Dinner Mon-Sat starting at 5 p.m.