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Magnolia House- a review by Kehoe

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Something new: NEW RESTAURANT REVIEW!
For our 44th Wedding Anniversary, my "B.W." and I ventured over to Mineola last Friday night to sample the gourmet fare at Magnolia House, which was built in 1906 by a successful local attorney and has a place in the National Historical Registry of "significant structures". Noticing it for sale, Katherine Campos, herself the wife of a successful local attorney, purchased the home back in 2007 and with the help of a long-time friend, Sylvia Thompson of Ft. Worth, restored and beautified the old home both inside and out. The grounds offer several boutique-style seating areas, under umbrellas, which will no doubt be of great appeal once the heat and humidity drop down to a level fit for human beings to dine al fresco. Thompson, who stayed on as Director of Operations, says they have plans to utilize the second floor for meeting room functions and catered events. Right now, the impressive rooms on the ground floor are quite enough to stir the heart, recalling the gracious dining of years gone by. The whole place offers a kind of "Great Gatsby" appearance; parking next door is adequate. The Magnolia is catty-corner from the Lake Country Theatre, so one can imagine fine dining apre' cinema at one's leisure.
Executive Chef Jen Meeker offers entrees ranging from $15.95 to $28.95, making them price competitive with that other great restaurant in town, "Kitchens". Only six entrees appear on the attractive menu, seven if you count the "catch of the day"-market priced.
Salads abound, all priced at $9.75, while two soup offerings are at $8.25. Appetizers are $9.25 and $11.95 for the Dungeness Lump Crab Cakes with roasted red pepper rouille & crispy leeks. We opted for that, and it was very delicious, and "just-right" spicy!
I selected the chicken with rice soup, which, though flavorful, was served tepid and wasn't really a worthy companion to my entrée. Betty selected a flavorful salad featuring roasted red peppers, baby greens, with cilantro ranch dressing on the side.
Her grilled pork tenderloin was quite good, served with carmelized onion roasted garlic mashed potatoes along with seasonal veggies. It was very tasty, but in truth, she makes a better roasted port tenderloin at home! Seriously! My entrée was the 14-oz. House Butchered Ribeye-the star of the show, served just as ordered, juicy enough to cut with a regular knife-a good thing, since our eager-to-please but brand-new (by admission) waiter never asked if I wanted a steak knife. He DID however ask if I wanted steak sauce, which I eschewed, hoping the steak needed no additional augmentation. To my delight, it didn't! It was "top-shelf". As an accompaniment I also had the same garlic laced mashed potatoes-only mine served as a platform for my steak, which I found a bit unnerving, since when I attempted to cut through the meat, the potatoes naturally squished out from their supportive place on the plate. Hmmmmm. Not as I would have done it.
Service was solicitous, but not too overly so, although by the end of the evening I was playfully fending off the ice tea girl! Water glasses lacked ice, but that was readily available once asked for. While Betty and I opted out of dessert, we did get a complementary plate of chocolate covered strawberries and other delights, with "Happy Anniversary" written in chocolate script along the edge of the plate! Coffee would have made a nice "top-off", but by then we had had just enough to feel pleasantly satisfied, so we called for the check and took our leave.
"Magnificent" is just one word I'd use to describe our culinary experience; though there were little things that could have been better, they didn't detract from the overall grande dining experience. The room temperature was just right, which is always an important detail to us, and the ambiance, though pleasant, could have been enhanced just a bit by having rheostat switches on the overhead lighting. But, hey, go try it! It'll make you reluctant to go to a lesser place once you do!
Steve H Kehoe, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Last Updated on Monday, 17 August 2009 01:23  

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