Brio Italian Grille

Chloe is a big Italian fan so for this week I went with Brio Italian Grille over in Easton. I had a busy stressful week so I got a little lazy on my selection, I know. Brio had always worked out for me in the past and was delicious so I figured it would be a good pick. Walking in, Alex had mentioned that he’d never been there before so it was a good experience for him. Chloe and I had both been there before so we knew what to expect.

We arrived a little after 5 and were seated right away. There was only a handful of table occupied so the restaurant was almost empty. I think there was more staff than customers at this point. We sat and looked over the menus and had plenty of time to come up with what we all wanted. After 10 minutes went by, and still no one had approached our table to greet us or offer us drinks, I started getting antsy. The kids didn’t want me to say anything so I stayed silent. After 20 minutes at our table, our server finally appeared from out of no where. Luckily the food we had was delicious, otherwise this would have been a complete disaster. I do think it left me with no urge to ever go back unfortunately. Bad service really can ruin it for a restaurant.

On a brighter note, the food that we all selected was good. Chloe spent a while looking for what she had last time but couldn’t find it anywhere on the menu. She knew that she wanted Rigatoni and Marina but there wasn’t anything on the menu that had that. I told her that it’s probably on a kids menu that wasn’t on the main menu and we weren’t offered. So I looked it up on my phone and was able to find it. They have a kids “make your own” pasta selection. I talked her into getting the “meat” sauce but she didn’t care for that part of it. She said there was too much meat. But otherwise it was good.

Alex took the longest to decide but came up with New York Strip. At $46, I tried to talk him out of it, especially since he’s notorious for not finishing his meals. He changed to something else but I could tell he didn’t really want it so I let him get the NY Strip. He was very excited that he got to get it. He ordered it Medium but it came out Medium Rare. I finished up some of the pieces that he didn’t want so it worked out for me. Medium Rare is how I order mine so I didn’t mind that they got it wrong.

I was trying to stick to something a bit on the lighter side being the New Year and the desire to lose a bit of the holiday weight! The grilled steak salad sounded delicious and given the service we were getting, I didn’t dare to get a salad first and then a meal so this combined them together! I was very happy with my selection as the salad was delicious. We all got a chuckle out of the steak though, as I ordered it Medium Rare and it was between Medium and Medium Well. We joked about how Alex got the level I asked for and I got the level he wanted.

I don’t want to tell you NOT to go to Brio, as the food was really good. I’d love to have that salad again, especially with steak cooked at Medium Rare. But if the service is consistent with what we experienced, it will ruin your time so go at your own risk.