Walking in and expecting something MUCH more fancy due to the Georgios name, I was pleasantly surprised by the casual atmosphere and outgoing staff greeting us at the door. From the decor, you'd never guess you were in a super dated strip mall in Sylvania, but from the demographics of the patrons, it was pretty clear where we were. For a Friday night at 7pm, we expected the restaurant to be much busier, and were pleased with the ability to be quickly seated and have our food delivered to the table with little to no wait by our wonderfully friendly server.
I will admit, I don't usually pay a ton of attention to the prices when I am not eating at nice restaurants, especially when I'm dining in Toledo, because the food in NW Ohio is usually on the ultra affordable side of the spectrum. That and the fact that Georgios Grill's focus is on the pizza being made in the old 5th Street Pub's (previous tenant) pizza oven, oddly still showing the custom "STREET" name tiled into the front, I was even less focused on the prices.
My side of the table ordered a chicken kabob, a steak, one appetizer, two cocktails and a club soda. And I mention the club soda here, because unlike any other restaurant in Toledo, Georgios Grill charges for their club soda. And I only noticed that after getting our receipt and realizing with a tip our dinner was almost $100.
$100 is not outrageous if say, my steak came with more than one side. And don't get me wrong, it was cooked to absolute perfection, but the green beans sitting next to it were bland, and the up-charged salad wasn't worth the additional $5. My wife's chicken looked dry, served on a limp cold pita, and as I sampled a bite of the "caramelized" onions that came with it, I realized they were merely cooked soft with no flavor or even a hint of browning.
The only highlights were my slice of the flatbread our table shared. It was soft and chewy, with gooey cheese on top, and a clear indicator pizza was the correct thing to order, both price and quality wise. The Halloumi cheese app, was browned just a little too much and served extra dry side with super under ripe avocado.
Will I ever come back? No. There is MUCH better in town, and while the steak was good, for almost $30 it should have been more than thrown on a plate.
This restaurant suffers from a severe identify crisis. The atmosphere is pub-like and definitely low brow. The food conceptually ranges from elevated bar food, to greek, to steak house, with no rhyme or reason for why, and no point of view coming from the kitchen.
The prices make sense for Sylvania, where they have a captive audience of affluent suburbanites, so I don't question the restaurant's motives to exist. Georgios Grill doesn't far fall from the tree. As I mentioned in my review of Georgios Cafe International in Downtown: "I wonder if they'd be able to charge the prices they charge if they were in another location." read more