Food Review: Rocky Top’s New Tribeca Tavern In Cary
By The Raleigh Telegram
Thursday, March 4, 2010
CARY -
The new restaurant is located at the intersection of Davis Drive and High House Road in Cary near the Harris Teeter shopping center and just opened recently.
Evidently, the restaurant is filling a large need in the Cary area, as there was over an hour wait when we went to the restaurant.
The hostess said we didn’t have to wait if we didn’t mind sitting outside (it was fairly cold at the time), so we jumped at the opportunity to sit on the terrace on the second floor.
During our dinner, we ordered wine and beer to start out with, along with some buffalo chicken wings ($9) as appetizers.
The restaurant offers beer specials and also has Rocky Top’s own Mash House Brewery beer on tap.
For our dinner main dishes, we ordered the handtossed shrimp pizza ($12) with basil cream sauce, mozzarella, prosciutto, fresh basil and crushed red pepper. We felt like the shrimp pizza was nicely done and the chefs did not scrimp on the shrimp.
Our other main dish was the simply named “healthy chicken” dish ($13) with olives, roasted
red peppers, artichokes, spinach and mushrooms with roasted garlic jus and cous cous. The chicken was good but quite frankly, the cous cous was the highlight of the dish.
We also tried a side dish of macaroni and cheese ($3) which we thought was also good.
Eating at Tribeca is not for those who are trying to eat on a budget. Prices at Tribeca are “upscale” and are what we would consider on the expensive side for a casual restaurant with burgers costing between $8 and $12. Entrees are between $13 and $15 including the simple shrimp and grits at $14.
If you’re ordering something to drink, you may as well order a beer as iced tea and soft drinks are $2.50 each.
The atmosphere of Tribeca is somewhat casual and family friendly, although there is a bar for the adults if you’d rather join in the fun there.
Tribeca was certainly busy on our visit, and we’re sure that the restaurant will be successful as it evidently fills a void in the Cary area.
However, there were several issues that we experienced when we visited Tribeca, particularly with the service. Hopefully, as the restaurant just opened the service issues will be resolved and future diners will have a better experience.
As our meal topped over $50 not including taxes, the corresponding service that you would expect for that level of dining was simply not there, although our server simply seemed to be assigned too many tables as opposed to being inattentive.
In terms of beverages, we had to ask that our tea glass be filled. Also, when we
ordered the Mash House beer, the menu said that our beer would be served in the large
23 ounce pilsner glasses -
Finally, when checking out, it seemed to be a very long wait of ten minutes or so
between the time that we asked for our check and “to-
Further, when we tried to pay for our meal with a Rocky Top Hospitality gift card, the waiter explained that they could not accept those there at that time. With these service issues, we give Tribeca a rating of three out of five stars.
Three out of five stars: Overall, we felt that the Tribeca Tavern offers fine food in a fun, friendly atmosphere albeit at somewhat high prices but we hesitated to give the restaurant a higher rating due to the service issues. Hopefully the restaurant will remedy some of our concerns after they are open for a longer time, as often it takes a while to work out the kinks in any new establishment.
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