Sometimes, I can eat a fairly good meal and still come away feeling a tiny bit dissatisfied.
Such was the case when my husband and I took the kids for a weekend dinner to Stuart Anderson's Black Angus, which has two locations in the Salt Lake Valley.
Let me say right up front that we had very good service. We called ahead to make a reservation and waited just a few minutes for a table, and our waiter was attentive and prompt and paced our meal nicely.
And the food was generally fine, even tasty. It's just that there was little to distinguish Black Angus from the bevy of other steak restaurants out there. It's a little less casual than Outback or Lone Star; a little less pricey than Ruby River. But it has little atmosphere or personality of its own.
We started with a combination of coconut shrimp and potato skins. The coconut shrimp were thickly coated with finely shredded coconut, almost to the point of obscuring the flavor of the shrimp. They came with a black-cherry marmalade dipping sauce, which sounds interesting, but the reality was a sweet and only slightly tangy dark sauce with little texture.
The potato skins were thick and decently prepared, though I would have liked a little more bacon and some green onion to jazz things up. They came with sour cream for dipping.
For dinner, I had the 12-ounce New York steak, cooked medium rare. I considered the eight-ounce cut, but I was glad I'd chosen the larger portion when at least a quarter of it turned out to be either fatty or tough. The edible part had a nice flavor and was well-cooked, but I felt a bit cheated.
With my steak, I had a generous mound of chunky, well-seasoned garlic mashed potatoes and a nice vegetable medley that featured squash, baby carrots, broccoli and snow peas.
That slight Asian touch was also found in the baby corn in my husband's steak soup, which was reminiscent of Campbell's vegetable beef soup with larger veggies and chunks of steak added.
He chose the soup as a side dish to "The Feast," a huge meal that features a 7-ounce sirloin, a petite lobster tail, baby back pork ribs and fried shrimp, plus cheesy garlic bread, "Haystack onion strings" and two sides.
The sirloin was well-seared and juicy, and the ribs were fall-off-the-bone tender. The six fried shrimp were quite small but sweet and crispy. The lobster, however, tasted watery and had little flavor when not dipped in its accompanying melted butter. The cheesy garlic bread was rich and chewy, and the haystack onion rings were very good, simultaneously thin, crisp and moist. The other side my husband chose with "The Feast" was a baked potato, which was soft and fluffy inside.
Though I cajoled them to try the sirloin or ribs offered on the kids' menu, our girls stood firm for their favorites, chicken strips and cheese pizza.
Their meals came with a scoop of vanilla ice cream with hot fudge and sprinkles, but that didn't stop them from scarfing down their share of Daddy's "Big Mountain" chocolate fudge cake, an enormous slab of rich, spongy cake coated with chocolate shavings and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It comes with a wee pitcher of hot fudge, a nice touch that lets diners use as much, or little, as they want.
While the chocolate-fueled feeding frenzy went on across the table, I quietly enjoyed my creme brulee, which was cool, rich and creamy, with a custard-like texture and a thick, crunchy coating of bittersweet caramelized sugar.
Appetizers $3.75-$11.99; pastas, salads and burgers $7.99-$13.99; entrees $11.99-$32.99; kids' meals $3.99-$4.99; desserts $3.99-$5.25.
Rating: ** 1/2
Where: 7206 S. Union Park Ave., Midvale, 352-7272; 10290 S. State, Sandy, 569-1200
Hours: Monday-Thursday 11 a.m.-10 p.m.
Friday-Saturday 11 a.m.-11 p.m.
Sunday Noon-9 p.m.
Payment: Checks, credit cards accepted
Reservations: Accepted
Stacey Kratz is a free-lance writer who reviews restaurants for the Deseret Morning News. E-mail: skratz@desnews.com