The Capital Grille had introduced a three-dish fixed price lunch menu and invited me to sample some of their offerings. The Philly location is huge, classic, and fancy, with very romantic lighting. There’s a whole lotta leather, wood, and people in suits. You get a basket of complimentary bread and it’s got a nice mix of things like pumpernickel, rolls, flatbread type things… I loved the variety.
Mint lemonade and grapefruit sodas. The lemonade was good, but not very minty at all. The grapefruit soda was awesome! Everything is freshly made, even these drinks!
M’s salad, with particularly tasty cherry tomatoes.
I had the clam chowder as my appetizer. This was quite the respectable cup of soup! It was thick, clammy, and full of potato and clam chunks. M got the lobster roll. Whoa, this was a huge pile of lobster. I mean huge. They didn’t really put it in the roll, they just kind of plopped it on top. That made sense though, as there was no way that giant pile of lobster was going to fit into any kind of roll. Oh man, that lobster was sweet and fresh and succulent. I’m not even all that into lobster, but this roll was great. And the haricots verts? I could not stop eating them! I’m a big fan of green beans and these were some of the best I’ve had in awhile.
I got the wagyu cheeseburger with fried egg and crisp onions. It’s got seasoned japanese wagyu beef, which is pretty darn fancy. And fried egg happens to be one of my favorite toppings for a burger! This little burger was good!
M picked the cheesecake as his dessert, which has a vanilla wafer crust, is garnished with fresh sweet berries in a strawberry sauce, and topped with a burnt sugar crust. If you like cheesecake, you’ll like this one.
I’m a creme brulee junkie, so you know that’s what I picked. The creme brulee itself good, but it was the fruit that won me over. Capital Grille philly, I don’t know where you get you berries from, but damn, they were awesome.
Some coffee, anyone? After all that food, it’d be hard to! Since we’re moving into Spring now, they’ve just switched things up for this lunch deal. They’re offering new selections, such as asparagus soup, spring and piquillo peppers with crisp bomba rice, and grilled spring veggies. Once again, it’s a three-dish prix fixe. For the quality and quantity of food, and the extremely high level of service, this is a great lunch deal!

Sushi spots abound in philadelphia. Sometimes, you can’t walk a block without running into one. Where were all these when I was growing up? I’ve gone to Makiman Sushi a couple of times recently, and I’m a fan. It’s a nice sized place with a small sushi bar. It’s very casual and a BYOB. The house salad with ginger sauce. I’m very judgy when it comes to these, because I’m a big fan of ginger dressing. Their’s was quite respectable. And props for a mix of greens and not just iceberg lettuce, not that I don’t love iceberg lettuce. They also had cucumber in there!
Miso soup… just fine.
The best dish at this place are the tuna nachos. It’s not like a pile of chips with tuna thrown on top. They’re two fried wontons (I think) topped with some veggies, raw tuna, and a spicy sauce. And they are glorious! I was hesitant about these but M convinced me to get them. I’m so glad he did! It’s more like an openface asiany tuna taco. The sauce is delicious, but at times, can be a bit too spicy. On our second visit, the sauce was sooooo spicy that M could barely eat it. But really folks, you’ve got to try these!
Here’s the sushi regular… M always gets the sushi regular, just like my mom. How many other people out there are sushi regulars?
For whatever reason, I decided to try a couple of random rolls that day. These were quite nice! While their sushi is just fine, let me just reiterate my love for the tuna nachos. I will keep coming back here because those things are so darn yummy!

Our last team dinner was at Grand Lux Cafe. I’d never heard of this place before, but it’s a basically a different version of the Cheesecake Factory, with a different name. It actually quite looks similar, but with less emphasis on cheesecake. Since Philadelphia is always the last to get chain restaurants, it didn’t surprise me that this was a chain.
Here’s my Asian Chicken Salad with chicken, fried wontons, rice noodles, lettuce, cabbage, almonds, carrots, tomatoes, in their asian dressing. As with any cheesecake factory item, it was ginormous. But also, not bad.
This is the Salmon Three Ways. It is done in soy glaze with shiitakes, horseradish crusted with asparagus, and finally almond ginger with green beans and buerre blanc.
While the food was really just ginormous portions of mediocre food, I really enjoyed the desserts. They have many baked to order desserts that you have toorder with your main entrees, as they take a long time to prepare. Since I love me some cobbler, I got the Peach Cobbler. It is super hot and served with vanilla ice cream. Delicious!
Here are the adorable Roasted Pineapple Upside-Down cakes, also served with vanilla ice cream.
They do a really decent Beignet! They are served with different dipping sauces.
Also, on a random lunch, I had the biggest baked potato I’d ever experience in my life. It was the size of the entire container. I swear to  you, it was the size of my head!