Nightlife / Stephanie Depasquale

Bring your friends when Grazing

By Stephanie De Pasquale | Friday, May 09, 2008 | () comments

I checked out Graze, Food Guru Experience, with a friend last week, and it turned out that we should have brought two other people with us.

The new Davenport restaurant located where Crave used to be, 5250 Utica Ridge Road, has an appetizer-based menu and features combinations of five plates designed and priced for a four-person dinner party.

As a party of two, we weren’t out of luck, however, because there is a menu option to order appetizer items separately, and we still paid about the same price per person as we would via the four-person dinner options.

We ordered the Mindoro blue cheese bruschetta, which is bruschetta topped with caramelized onions and Mindoro blue cheese, and the lip pizzadilla, which is a folded pizza crust filled with chicken lips (aka buffalo chicken), blue cheese and ranch dressing, cheddar jack cheese, lettuce and tomatoes.

The bruschetta was difficult to eat without spilling the onions, but it tasted delicious. The combinations of blue cheese dressing and cheddar jack cheese in the pizzadilla offset the spicy chicken lips to create a cool and spicy dish.

And despite the dishes being called “appetizers,” we had enough food left over for each of us to reheat the next day and call it lunch.

In a Quad-City Times article that was published before Graze’s February opening, Food Guru Peter Harman, who has a regular segment on KWQC-TV, said his business is a female-friendly place. With a 60-drink martini list, no televisions playing game highlights in sight and only two men who weren’t waiters when I first arrived in the restaurant, I would say the Food Guru was right about that.

Stephanie De Pasquale can be contacted at (563) 333-2639 or sdepasquale@qctimes.com.