My wife and I like to try different places and The Pond House looked to be a nice treat. We live in Tallahassee, so it's an hour drive, and the GPS had us going the back roads. It was a beautiful early evening and prior reviews recommended arriving at opening, so we left at 4pm. It turned out the GPS gave a nice country ride, which made the trip more enjoyable.
The drive was about an hour long and put us just northwest of Bainbridge, GA. Off the pavement and on a short dirt road was The Pond House. Already the parking lot had a dozen cars, but only large parties were waiting outside.
Nice quant place in the country, which was strange, it explains the hours of operation.
We were greeted by person at the register and were nicely surprised when we got seated immediately.
The restaurant has one large open area and one smaller area for seating, we got the larger. Nice open beam interior with fireplace. No booths, just tables and chairs.
The restaurant isn't large, so if you have a large party I would call a day/s before and talk about a reservation? We saw one party of 10.
Our server was really nice and asked if we had questions. She also returned to the table throughout our experience. Could not have asked for a better server.
Rarely my wife and I ordered the exact same thing, but we did.
Drink; Tea
Dinner; Rib Eye (med rare) with baked potato and green beans.
(We chose not to order an appetizer, we saw the size of the steaks coming from the kitchen, but they looked good coming out).
There are crackers on the table to munch on prior to the main course, next time I'll order a salad instead of the green beans.
Our steaks were perfectly cooked and as tender as the finest restaurant. I noticed a LOT of juice on the plate, a lot more than I would normally see*. The Rib Eye steaks were tasty, but quite salty. But that didn't stop us from enjoying, just more salt than normal. The baked potato was foil wrapped, obviously not microwaved, and extremely hot. The green beans were wonderful, hard to chose the next time; green beans or the potato. Served with dinner was a yeast roll each, good for soaking up the juice.
No room for desert, but they had cobbler's and ice cream and key lime pie. Maybe next time.
Dinner for two ended up just under $90 without tip, $110 with.
* After getting home, I had a hour to think about it, I'm guessing the cook poured Au Jus on the steak. I think that's where all the salty taste came. But I'm guessing. Next time I'll ask and have it left off, or less salt seasoning added. I can see this review going 5 stars.
My wife and I both agreed (OMG) that we would go back. Maybe leave a lot earlier and check out the area before dinner.
No wifi and I didn't have phone coverage with T-Mobile. Sorry no photos this time. read more