Garrett's - The Art of Food

This is my favorite restaurant in montgomery, the food is amazing! My wife and I have eaten here several times and even had our rehearsal dinner there! We would highly recommend this to anyone looking for a good time abandd great food.
Aug 19th, 2016

My wife and I ate here valentines day and it was so romantic. Great food wine and atmosphere. We went back in April for our anniversary. We were treated so well. Let them know it is your anniversary and they give you a special surprise with your dessert. My wife just loved. We'll be back again. If you want to wine and dine a special Lady take her here.
Feb 21st, 2013

The tagline for Garrett's is "the art of food," which didn't fill me with confidence that the restaurant was going to be very good - if your food is good, you don't have to stencil that fact onto the doors. The last of my fine dining experiences in Montgomery, Garrett's was also faced with the failed promises of a variety of other restaurants in the city, charging too much and delivering too little. Oh, and the night prior I drove up to Birmingham to dine at the Hot and Hot Fish Club, so my expectations were still reeling from one of the best restaurants in the southern United States. Good luck, Gary! They're obviously trying to create a high falootin' atmosphere, and the restaurant does look extremely nice with a lot of contemporary flair and a way of making it seem a lot bigger than it is. When I ate at Martha's Place a few weeks ago, I drove past it in that strip mall without realizing it - it's not quite where you'd expect, though you forget about it once you walk past the piano in the entryway. I walked in, sat down, and ordered a beer from the tap, which turned out to be a little more difficult than I expected, as the fridge was so cold that it froze the taps. Not a big deal in the moment, but it doesn't contribute to the atmosphere they're trying to perpetuate. Says the chef on the website (which annoyingly and automatically started playing a video upon visiting), "It starts by making sure everything is freshly prepared with absolutely no shortcuts. From the meats to the sauces, everything has to be top of the line". This clearly didn't apply to the bread. The complimentary loaf they bring out prior to the meal is the kind that's frozen elsewhere and finished in the kitchen. It created a slightly stale texture and a crust that turned to crumbs as soon as I picked it up. The neatly-piped compound butter did nothing to save it. This bread appeared in my soup appetizer as a crostini on the side that was topped with a bit of melted cheese but was otherwise unpleasantly stale to the point where I'm surprised they would send it out. It's confusing, because the vegetable soup du jour was a hearty vegetable soup - while not necessarily appropriate for the season - was a large mingling of fresh vegetables that was simple, but good. The entree was a couple pieces of Gulf grouper, topped with a cold marinated crab salad, served atop a pile of baked linguini, and with a bunch of blips and bloops of sauces here and there around the plate. I'm not sure I agree with serving the crab cold, but there were some good chunks of it in there, at least. The fish was seasoned well and flaked easily with my fork. The linguini was the puzzler - the starch predominantly brought notes of cheese to the plate, which not only violated the cardinal rule of pairing cheese with seafood, but created an oil slick of grease on my plate. Not appetizing. I would have much prefered the vegetable-protein-starch ratio be slanted more towards the vegetable, because I nearly confused my four haricot vert as a garnish. The true garnish was the sprig of thyme that sat there doing nothing. What, am I supposed to strip the leaves from it and add it to my meal? That's your job. Let's grow up and stop placing inedible garnishes on my plate. Truth be told, the saving grace of Garrett's is that they do the basics very well, and the quality of the grouper was what sealed it for me. (The price didn't hurt either - the majority of the dishes here were priced slightly below the $30 mark, as opposed to most of their peers.) The problem is that they try too hard, attempting to make my dinner an art deco piece. The best meals I've had in my life weren't good because of how abstract they looked, they were good because the person making it had a firm understanding of seasoning and cookery. The secret to "the art of food" is that it doesn't need to be art at all to be a masterpiece.
Nov 24th, 2012

Wonderful restaurant with a very inventive chef. The food is always magnificent and they have a very good winelist! Great place to go for a nice quiet date with your spouse or significant other.
Jun 30th, 2003