Every once in a while a restaurant sneaks up on me and provides quality food when I least expect it. I like to call them “sneaky good” spots. Outback Steakhouse is one of the biggest chains in America. Their commercials with the corny Australian accents and down-underism’s have until this point, kept me from eating at their establishment. It appears I was missing out, because Outback’s food is actually way better than I expected.
I ordered the wood-fire grilled pork chop, complete with garlic mashed potatoes and a ridiculously good creole marmalade. The pork definitely had a nice char, not overly burnt but just enough to give it some subtle smoky flavor. I was also impressed with the tenderness of the meat and the lean cut that was mostly sans fat.
What really put this dish over the top was the creole marmalade. Pork is great with a lot of fruits. Apples, mangoes, oranges, you name it. What I haven’t tried with pork before, is a spicy fruit glaze like this one. When I ran out of pork to dip it in, I used my mashed potatoes...and then my green beans. It was that good. If they sold this stuff on Amazon, I would order it in bulk and just dip all of my food in it. Okay, that might be taking it a bit far, but it was still some high quality marmalade.
My mashed potatoes were rock solid, and even the green beans were surprisingly good. They were fresh, and had a nice, crisp, snap to them. It was a satisfying meal, and for $13 I got what felt like plenty of food. I think it’s kind of funny that I didn’t order the steak at a steakhouse, but the dish I had was so good that I know I’m going back to try more. It might look like an annoyingly over the top chain restaurant, but Outback Steakhouse delivers where it counts, the flavor department.
Post-Meal Breakdown:
Food: 3 out of 4
Price: 3 out of 4
Satisfaction: 3.5 out of 4
