Club Isabella

Cool atmosphere, delishious food, bread is to die for. Very friendly staff and owner. Highly recommend. 5 ⭐️

Good food, original dishes and flavors, scotch egg with blue cheese wedge was excellent and roast duck was best I ever had

Not great.. the French 75 was room temperature and lacking bubbles. The cucumber fizz was good. I attribute that to the use of seven brothers vodka. The tartar trio was rather disappointing. There was so much mustard and pickle mixed in that it was difficult to differentiate between the salmon and the steak. The sauce was just added vinegar, and the crustinis were bland and brittle.
I had grouper cheek for my entree and the texture was all wrong (rubbery, possibly frozen). The risotto was a fine carb vessel for cheese, but the cucumber and pomegranate on top didn't make sense. The short rib was akin to wedding venue pot roast. It came with a root vegetable mash. No seasoning, very airy.
Our waiter was fine, very quiet though so I always had to ask him to repeat himself. He also didn't notice that I only ate two bites of my grouper.

On the positive, the decor is lovely and they play Sinatra.

The restaurant space is beautiful. Staff very friendly and attentive. Food was delicious and well above average. Great wine selection. Bread was fantastic. The only thing that gives me pause, and perhaps it is because it is located on the fringes of University Circle, is that for most of our meal, we were the only patrons. When we left, there was only two other tables. This was on a day at a time when virtually any similar restaurant would have been packed. Perhaps it just needs more exposure.

The food was pretty good, nothing super special, and portion sizes were a bit small. I was more frustrated with the poor service. Our waiter was friendly but maybe a little too friendly and not as focused on actually serving us. Our waters were not refilled and he never really came by to check on us unless we called him over. If the restaurant had been busy I would have been more understanding but we were one of 3 parties there. The chef also kept peaking his head out into the dining room and was making me slightly uncomfortable because he was basically staring at us, I suppose seeing if we liked the food. He also seemed a bit miffed that there weren't more people there. They also were out of multiple menu items, and the menu is small to begin with so options were limited. There was actually a party who came in and left because there were so few options.