I made my first trip to Derby Downs in Akron to see Joy(ce)Ride take on her second bucket-list piece of pavement in a year. After the race downhill Steph and I looked for a lunch spot close enough to get her back to the Falls and me to the dogs. We dashed up to the Grille on Waterloo which replaced Ripper’s Tap House, not a bad thing if our visit was any indication.
The place feels much cleaner and open than our first journey. It might have something to do with the large business crowd. It might feel a little different on the WONE night at the bar. They were packed and like most others we were interested in a quick lunch. Steph ordered a bacon bleu burger with fries and I got a cup of chili and the lunch special gyro with onion rings.
We were first attended to by a somewhat disheveled looking busser who sat us and was incredibly on-the-ball and friendly. Our server paled somewhat in comparison but she was able to manage the lunch push fairly well.
The chili was devoid of spicy heat but had a clean veggiecentric broth along with the ground beef. There was an interesting note that developed about halfway through the taste, my best guess would be cocoa powder. It really could have used a bit of punch. This was going to be a theme for lunch, a mixture of ehhhh and ugh.
The sandwiches were even less interesting. The gyro consisted of strips of beef/lamb mix and all of the regular fixin’s in the pita. I’ve had better in gas stations or from pizza shops. The tzatziki sauce seemed to be there for lubrication alone as there wasn't much cucumber or garlic or anything else coming along for the ride. The burger was alright in some regards but had a tragic flaw…bacon bits. If you are familiar with the strange and off putting flavor not quite bacon adds to anything it’s hard to miss. The rest might have been alright, the bun was actually really nice but it all slouched into unappetizing with those little bits. Fries and onion rings were about what you would expect from the bar, which was an improvement on the sandwiches. If you need quick calories to get you through the rest of your day, The Grille will get you those, if you want something you would crave again...keep looking.