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Trio Grill, American from the Owners of Circa and Open Road - Lee Highway just Outside the Beltway in Merrifield


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It was Restaurant Week in Northern Virginia and on the list was a restaurant I never heard of called Trio Grill.  We thought we would give it a try.  The bread and herb butter was good, the wine selection for reds was good...about 12 categories with a couple of bottles in each category in the $30s (upper end of my budget).  We ordered the tempura shrimp app in addition to RW meal.  They were superb although there were only 5 of them for $16.  The waldorf salads were okay.  My stuffed chicken meal was a bit boring--more of the stuffing would have improved it.  My husband, normally not effusive in his praise, declared his Berkshire pork chop the best pork he has ever had in a restaurant!  Desserts were too sweet.  Service was friendly and efficient.  The room was very busy and loud so we had to shout to each other to be heard sometimes.  All in all, we liked it and will return.  However, during non-RW times, the prices are high, so it will only be for special occasions.  Unfortunately, my husband's idea of a special occasion is "when he feels like eating pork again."

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My wife and I had dinner at The Trio Grill the other night. It was our first time there, and we were both pleased.  To begin with, the restaurant looked nice"”white table clothes, comfortable chairs, etc.  My first course was tomato bisque soup with pesto.   It was very good.  For the main course I had the Berkshire  Pork Chop mentioned above.  It came, as the menu stated, with braised collard greens, bacon and apple marmalade, and spicy habanero mustard.  It was delicious.  The mustard was a bit too spicy for me, but that is a very minor complaint.  The pie I had for desert was OK, but nothing special.

In general both my wife and I were quite pleased.  Good atmosphere, nice service, and good food.  Check out their menu on line.  If the kind of food they have appeals to you, I think you will enjoy a visit.

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We went again on Saturday for Restaurant Week.  They really try to make the customers happy.  We had to wait because the 2-top assigned to us was still occupied with people who were done with the bill but just chatting.  Probably because I looked aggravated after waiting for a while, the hostess changed us to a 4-top.  Hope that didn't screw anybody else up.  My husband noticed the couple at the 2-top sat for 10 minutes longer chatting before they finally got up and left.  That pork chop is the best; the desserts are not so great.  I had chocolate mousse and it was forgettable.

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On 11/14/2015 at 10:06 AM, hopsing said:

My husband, normally not effusive in his praise, declared his Berkshire pork chop the best pork he has ever had in a restaurant!  

On 1/31/2016 at 2:51 PM, John William G said:

For the main course I had the Berkshire  Pork Chop mentioned above.  It came, as the menu stated, with braised collard greens, bacon and apple marmalade, and spicy habanero mustard.  It was delicious.  The mustard was a bit too spicy for me, but that is a very minor complaint.  

Data-mining operation complete. Mini-pattern detected.

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On 2/1/2016 at 5:48 PM, DonRocks said:

Data-mining operation complete. Mini-pattern detected.

Darn it, I wish I had read this thread - I went during happy hour, and found the plates of food I got (although well-priced) to be somewhat over-sauced and not light on their feet at all. Still, they were only seven dollars each, so no complaints here, especially with their fine selection of draft beers which are five dollars from 4-7 PM, Mon-Fri. This is not a bad place for you to try for happy hour.

However, I have the oddest story that I'm not even sure I can explain properly.

One of the most expensive producers of wine in the world is the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in Burgundy. Their wines run into the "thousands of dollars per bottle," and even their least-expensive offering is "hundreds of dollars per bottle." Anyway, their wines have a unique bouquet that's impossible to describe, because nothing else in the world smells like it. The British wine critic Michael Broadbent once said it smelled of "boiled beetroot," but I've never found that to be true; no scent on this Earth has ever replicated the scent of a Romanée-Conti ... until I walked towards the restroom at Trio to wash my hands before dinner. As I approached the door, I was hit with the immediate, unmistakable scent of the wine, in particular, an aged La Tâche, which is their second-most expensive red - and as soon as I opened the door, the scent became overpowering, as if my nose was literally inside a glass of twenty-year-old La Tâche. There must have been some combination of ingredients in their cleaner that produced nearly an exact replica of the scent of this wine, and I simply could not believe what I was experiencing. There is *no doubt* that any oenophile who is familiar with Romanée-Conti's wines would have instantly thought the same thing.

I've written some bizarre things before, but I acknowledge that few things are as bizarre as this ... still, it's the absolute truth, and it wasn't a close approximation; it was a dead ringer.

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Dined here a week ago with my sister.   I dont' remember exact prices, so whatever I have listed is my best guess memory.  

It's a handsome, comfortable restaurant and I thought the service was very good throughout the meal.  I started with a cocktail called the "Just Right" of bourbon, egg, lemon, habanero shrub and served with one giant ice cube and garnished with blueberries pickled in a maraschino cherry brine.  It was perfectly balanced with no one flavor coming to the forefront, but instead creating one entirely new-to-me flavor.  That was a nice treat.  I rarely find a new flavor at my age!  My sister got a Moscow Mule and loved it, but it's a lot more heavy ginger bite to it than I like.

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We shared an order of the lemongrass pork potstickers, which were nice and light, a very sheer dumpling wrapper that wasn't browned much.  It was such a delicate wrapper, though, it may not have been able to take much more heat and remain intact.  The stuffing was tasty and only pressed enough to hold together.  Served with a sweet chili oil based sauce and soy sauce on the side on top of a watercress salad with a little lemony mayo drizzle.   I think $11 for 5 dumplings, so I think a fair price for a good appetizer.   

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Mains, she got the cider braised pork shank (around $35) and I got the short rib with baked beans, root veggies and crispy polenta (about $30).  I got a taste of hers and the pork shank definitely was the winner between the two meats.  Luscious, juicy, delicious.  The short rib I got was a good rendition and was cooked well, but it simply couldn't match the yum of the pork shank.  The crispy polenta reminded me of the spooonbread my mom used to make when I was a child -- silky, buttery, corny -- that was cut into a rectangle and fried into a crunchy shell.   Overall, I thought it was a good meal if you want to stuff yourself on homey comfort food, which I did that night.

Screenshot 2017-01-22 at 10.10.33.png

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On 2/1/2016 at 5:48 PM, DonRocks said:

Data-mining operation complete. Mini-pattern detected.

37 minutes ago, weezy said:

Mains, she got the cider braised pork shank (around $35) and I got the short rib with baked beans, root veggies and crispy polenta (about $30).  I got a taste of hers and the pork shank definitely was the winner between the two meats.  Luscious, juicy, delicious.  The short rib I got was a good rendition and was cooked well, but it simply couldn't match the yum of the pork shank.  The crispy polenta reminded me of the spooonbread my mom used to make when I was a child -- silky, buttery, corny -- that was cut into a rectangle and fried into a crunchy shell.   Overall, I thought it was a good meal if you want to stuff yourself on homey comfort food, which I did that night.

Screenshot 2017-01-22 at 10.10.33.png

Unfortunately, it sounds like the much-vaunted Pork Chop (a perpendicular cut near the spine, sometimes from the Loin) has been replaced by Pork Shank (the lower-leg portion, sometimes called Hock). The menu doesn't say the Shank comes from Berkshire Hogs, and it would seem logical to advertise that factoid if it did - so, I guess unless told otherwise, I'd assume "no Berkshire," but I am glad that Trio is still putting out a successful pork entree.

(See my Feb 1, 2016 post for why I'm even pointing this out.)

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