Winston's brunch a culinary success.

Myself and a friend ate at Winston's for brunch today. WOW is all I can say. I knew they had a great reputation but I have to say I was blown away, as was my friend. I had a $60.00 gift certificate and we used every bit of it and left a $20.00 tip. We weren't really pigs; we each took home a big bag of leftovers.

We split a pastry tray which was yummy. The berry and cream cheese filled muffins were our faves. My friend had the French toast with chocolate ganache and deemed it a total success. He also added side of scrambled eggs with cheese and awesome grits with garlic, bacon and cheese. They did not skimp on the garlic, and that is a beautiful thing.

I had the special of the day, a 9 ounce strip steak with eggs and hash browns. Along with that I ordered some bacon and those wonderful grits. The steak was in a word, perfect. I ordered it medium rare and so it was. It came already sliced with lovely juices oozing from the meat. The dish was served in a large bowl with the hash browns on the bottom, 2 eggs over medium arranged nicely in the center and the steak with a bit of hollandaise placed toward the far end of the bowl.

Well, my friend and I made a nice headway but wound up with a lot of food to take home. In my bag were boxes of steak, hash browns, grits, 2 muffins and some other assorted pastries. My buddy took home French toast, grits and 2 of those awesome muffins. We decided we will definitely be going back to try more of their brunch items. All the dishes we saw come out of the kitchen were prettier than the ones before them. We also enjoyed the refined ambience of the smallish dining room. It is very classy and well appointed.

One last word. The service was splendid. We had a main server as well as a service assistant. I understand these people are students, but the level of professionalism displayed today impressed both my companion and I.

I have also had a very good Sunday brunch at Winston's, as well as several dinners (although it has been a year or so since I've been there). It's a really terrific restaurant, but is usually not on the short list for white tablecloth places we think of. It does seem, however, really pricey to me, although I think the quality of the ingredients is quite high (although I have found the service spotty, which is fine given that it's a teaching restaurant). Glad you reminded us of Winston's.

We splurged because of the $60.00 GC. If I didn't have the GC, I am sure our brunch would've been in the mid 20's to 30 dollar range. The service we had today was virtually flawless. We even had servers other than ours and our assistant come to take things away and ask if we needed more water, drinks, etc. My pal and I were even commenting on the dinner and service ware. They seemed higher end for sure.

All in all, we enjoyed our visit immensely and will definitely be heading back. I would also like to add that when we arrived shortly before 1pm, the dining room was packed. I am glad I'd made reservations.

Here is an informational link... http://sullivan.edu/winstons/about_winstons.asp