Twisted Tree Steakhouse in South County 12-6-25

I'd give this place a 3 on decor but a 4.5 on food and wine.  

It has been several years since we've been to Twisted Tree, but they just keep getting good reviews, so we decided to try it again.

We had tickets to the Fox, so we had a 5 o'clock reservation.

This restaurant is attached to a Holiday Inn.  The parking is HORRIBLE.  I even remember that from several years ago.  All the hotel people take up the spots and we luckily found a spot WAY around back.  It was cold and we had to walk and walk from our car.  We came in a side door and walked all the way through the convention center part of the hotel, out the front door and then around the front side to the entrance to the restaurant.  What a pain!

As I mentioned...the decor in this place needs some help.  I KNOW...it is a hotel restaurant.  That means they are going to accept all kinds of people in all kinds of clothes at all times of day.  But it has "nice" food and it just doesn't have to look so "yee haw."  Wagon wheel style circular light fixtures...photos of cattle on the walls...wooden paneling.  It has fine dining style food and the decor of an old Bonanza buffet restaurant.  

The clientel is quite varied.  There were a wide range of ages and ethnicities of people there.  That was nice...but it was heavy on the white, over 50 crowd.

The waitress was nice.  We ordered a drink and told her to leave the wine menu.  She politely informed us that they had a sommelier who was not stuffy at all and very easy to talk to.  I agree that sommeliers are somewhat intimidating to me, even.  So, that was nice of her to try and put our minds at east.  For a cocktail I ordereda drink called the Smoked Orchard.  It was made with mezcal, cider, lime and ginger beer.  I like all those things.  It was OK.  There was no "smoked" aroma or flavor to it at all, and the mezcal was overpowering.  It had a salted and cinnamon rim...I found that odd.  The cider and ginger beer were nice.  

Mike had a gin and tonic.  It is one of the places that brings you a small unopened bottle of tonic water, so you know it is fresh.  That is nice, but a little wasteful, as he doesn't need a whole bottle of tonic for one cocktail.

I do have one complaint...their salads.  They are WAY too big for one person.  They come in a large serving bowl and then you serve yourself onto a plate.  Mike got a traditional field greens salad and I got a caesar salad.  They come with homemade croutons, shaved parm, homemade salad dressings.  We each ate 1/2 of the salad.  If I had eaten the whole salad...I would not have been able to eat ANY of my dinner.  

For dinner I ordered the special which were 4 large scallops on a bed of creamy sweet potato risotto.  It was very good and I would order it again in a second.  The scallops were very well prepared.  The risotto had the slightest bit of sweetness from the sweet potatoes.  YUM!

Mike had his favorite...prime rib.  He got the largest piece so he would have plenty of left overs.  He also got a LARGE baked potato with butter and sour cream.  

We tried a new wine with dinner.  Honig Cabernet.  We just ordered it from our waitress.  I had looked it up on my Vivino app.  It was delivered by the sommelier.  He was very nice.  He told us all about this winery and how there was a bee on the front of the bottle because they also grow olives and honey on this vineyard.  He explained how it was a small family owned winery and the main guy still travels and promotes his wines.  Our waitress was right...the sommelier was nice and not too pretentious.  

They had some yummy looking desserts, but we were full and didn't really have the time to linger over dessert and coffee.  

The food/wine were better than I remembered...I just need to get over myself about the yee haw decor.  

Yes, we'd go here again.