North Canton, Ohio
Californian Cuisine
Dined
in April 2014
Before I begin this review I must inform you through
disclaimer that I used to work for this company at this restaurant for a period
of time while I was living in Canton, before moving on to other opportunities
overseas. That being said, this review is based on two visits I made to both 91 Wood Fire Oven locations before
I was employed, so there is no conflict of interest, and this review is like
any other on this blog, honest and truthful based on my overall experience.
That being said, it was a decent place to eat, better than their sister
restaurant Table Six.
Scroll down to read the main review
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Star
ratings chart:
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5 stars
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Extraordinary
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4 stars
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Outstanding
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3 stars
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Exceeded
expectations
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2 stars
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Above average
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1 star
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Average
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No star rating
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Basic,
poor, or appalling
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Review basics:
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Overall Star rating by
Wine, Dine, & Play:
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1 of 5
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Quality of food:
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6 of 10
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Presentation:
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7 of 10
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Wine selections by
region:
Scroll below the main review section to see the tasting
notes of the wines chosen.
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4 of 10
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Customer service:
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7 of 10
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Ambiance:
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7 of 10
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Corkage fee’s:
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American Restaurant standard is $25.00 per bottle
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Restaurant style:
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Casual
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Dress code:
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Smart casual, or Casual
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Reservations:
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Not Required
Make reservation through seatme.com,
a service through Yelp, or by contacting the restaurant directly. See contact
info below the review section
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Walk-ins:
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Accepted
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Child policy:
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They have a kids menu, and
cater to them with specials on Wednesdays so avoid the place like the plague
on Wednesdays, and if the people going had common sense they would allow
adult to eat in peace by hiring a Babysitter. See Alinea Baby Gate,
god I love Alinea.
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Cuisine style:
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Contemporary, Modern,
Seafood, American, Californian, & Vegetarian
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Music styles:
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Background instrumental
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Experiences:
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Great outdoor dining, Good for special occasions, Intimate, and a Neighborhood gem.
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Gratuities:
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Industry standard is 18-20% added to parties of 6 or more
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Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, Diner’s,
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Parking:
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Public lot, or street parking
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Transport options:
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Bus, taxi, limousine, personal vehicle, and walking
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The restaurants reviewed on
this site may have Wi-Fi, but do not require you to go online, because the
excitement of the food and wine alone will keep you too entertained instead
of checking your social media and emails.
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Noise level:
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Medium
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Smoking:
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Nonsmoking restaurant, and nonsmoking patio
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Patio:
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Yes
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Food price per person
(Excluding tax & gratuity)
Price chart:
$£€¥ - Under 50.00
$£€¥ x 2 - Under 75.00
$£€¥ x 3 - Over 100.00
$£€¥ x 4 - Over 200.00
$£€¥ x 5 - Over 400.00
Currencies
chosen reflect the world’s major travelers and restaurant connoisseur's
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My food bill:
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Currency:
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Country :
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Price chart:
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$ 41.00
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United States Dollar (USD)
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$
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£ 24.14
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Great Britain Pound
Sterling (GBP)
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£
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€ 30.46
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European Union
(EUR)
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€
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$ 44.08
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Canadian Dollar (CAN)
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$
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Visit these sites to
get up to date currency rates:
Alternatively, visit:
Scroll down below the main review to see cost of wines and tasting
notes.
From restaurants home page:
Ninety One Wood Fired Oven is an upscale casual restaurant
as unique as its name. In the restaurant business since 1991, owners, Greg and
Amy Goehring had a vision for a dining experience based on fresh, seasonal
foods prepared in a chef-led kitchen. High quality, fresh ingredients are
showcased on pizzas and in pasta and seafood dishes. Our strip steaks, touted
as the “best in the city” are chateau cut, seasoned and grilled to perfection.
Main review:
As far as restaurants in the Canton area, this one is not
too bad, when you’re comparing to the others. There are very few nice or fine
dining restaurants in Canton, mainly to do with the fact that it is an old
factory town that unfortunately is very run down, and very high with crime. The
91 Wood Fife Oven has two locations, one in North Canton where the first part
of this review is based, which also happens to be where the better area and
neighborhoods are located, and the second is to the west of the city of Canton
in Jackson Township, but overall it is still listed as Canton on maps. As I
entered the restaurant and was seated, I saw that it was well kept and neat,
very similar to a French Style café-bistro and elegant. The only throw off was
that every table had a table tent with advertisements of upcoming events, which
you expect to see at a TGI Friday’s, not a restaurant that is advertising as
finer dining.
My server was very professional and had a huge portion of
knowledge to the menu, and was very comfortable at communicating it to me, as
well as maintaining complete professionalism, which was the exact opposite as
my Table Six experience. I took time reviewing the menu, and meanwhile she
presented a plate of breads, one a homemade focaccia, and the other being a
sourdough bread. She then presented a small plate with the numbers ninety one
written on them made from a balsamic reduction, and then she topped the plate
with olive oil, a nice touch. The sourdough was not home made and was actually
very hard and crispy. Being that I would later work here, and be in charge of
warming up this bread, I can attest to the fact that it got hard easy and fast.
I ordered a bottle of wine while I reviewed the menu, a
cabernet from Faust Vineyards, Coombsville, Napa
Valley, which I knew would be a very good selection since one of my favorite
Napa wines came from the same area, a Gustavo wine. As the wine was
delivered, the server did a small pour, where I could taste, and the wine was
very good, the only bad thing, and it was not her fault, but the wine was very
warm. Now as a wine connoisseur as you have most likely seen from reading the
reviews of the wines I have on this blog, you will be able to tell that I’m
picky…not a snob, just picky. Red wine especially a decent one like this
cabernet, should be held like most red wines at a cool temperature between 54
and 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and every wine expert in the world will agree to
that as the best temperature for optimal enjoyment. There are a lot of basic
places in America that treat medium to excellent wines like they do crappy
table wines or house wines, and it is such a disappointment when you have to
ask for a bucket of ice water to chill down your red wine. So unfortunately 91
and their sister restaurant Table Six join the sad list of other restaurants
and chains that leave all their wine behind the bar on a shelf above the
refrigerators where they keep the cold beer, and as anyone knows the basic laws
of physics, warm air rises, and cool air descends, so the red wine sits there
and gets hotter, which can also damage the wine. Now to me, I don’t care what
the restaurant does to their wine, because they bought it, but if I’m going to
drink it, then they need to do a better job. This is why most chain restaurants
or places like this I go to, I bring in my own bottle.
(Scroll down below the main review to see wine tasting notes)
I started with an appetizer of their crab cakes, which most
times I’m usually hesitant, because I make excellent crab cakes, and most
places I go, they usually taste like crap except for Hank’s Seafood, in Charleston, South
Carolina which is the only place that made a better crab cakes then mine. The
91 crab cake here came with a roasted red pepper curry and a lemon caper tarter.
The cake had a lot of fillings but missed out on a little flavor that I was
expecting. It was okay, but not as good as mine or Hank’s Seafood.
For the salad and the entrée I ordered off their normal menu
and went with some special items that they had, not that I didn’t think the
entrée’s on the menu weren’t good, I just wasn’t in the mood for a lemon
chicken, Marsala chicken, or scallop risotto just to list a few examples of
what they had. For the salad course I had a Gorgonzola salad, with spinach,
arugula, san marcona almonds, frozen cherries, and zinfandel vinaigrette
dressing. It was very tasty but lacked enough arugula lettuce to match the
power of the dressing in my opinion.
For the entrée course I tried their Barramundi, breaded and
sautéed, served with Yukon mashed potatoes, with a garnie of arugula and kale
lettuce, with the same zinfandel vinaigrette. This time there was plenty of
Arugula. The fish had a good amount of flavor, but I thought the potatoes were
a little dry.
For dessert and I’m surprised I even had room, I asked for
recommendations and my server pointed me in the direction of their s’mores
dessert which just hit the spot, very rich and very good, graham cracker crust,
peanut
butter caramel, ganache, and marshmallows. As I looked back
at the kitchen, open air into the dining room, their stone wood fire oven where
their pizza’s and a few other items were made, I thought why not, give it a
try, since I had time to kill before going back overseas, and I applied.
After I had accepted the job and spoke with the main Chef, I
ate at the second 91 restaurant location in Jackson Township where I would also
work at before moving to the North Canton location. Night and day is the best
way to describe the locations. Jackson was larger, and more spread out compared
to North Canton, and the menu was almost the same with the addition of a few
items. The service on the other had was not the same. The server in North
Canton was attentive and professional; the Jackson server was not, a lady named
Corina. When I remember a servers name in a restaurant that I visit, they are
either fantastic servers, or their crappy servers, it’s just how it goes. Now
Corina may not reflect the restaurant as a whole, but she is remembered for not
giving good service or being at all professional. The server at the North Canton
location was good, I don’t remember her name, but she was still good.
On this visit, I explored more of the menu so that I would
know the type of meals I would be preparing, and this time to avoid the fiasco
of a warm to hot red wine; I ordered a bottle white wine, a chardonnay from Rombauer Vineyards in St. Helena, Napa Valley. For an appetizer to
start, I had the brie caramel with homemade caramel sauce and salted flat-bread.
Now I’m a sucker for brie, I love it, so I figured I’d give this a try. Caramel
to me was okay, on dessert, but heck I was open to try anything. Oh my god, it
was fowl, the worst combination of flavors I had ever tasted. The caramel was
so strong that it blotted out the flavors of the cheese, which is hard to do on
a brie, so avoid this appetizer when you visit folks.
For a salad course I had the goat cheese with cherry salad, mesculin
greens, glazed pecans, dried cherries, pecan goat cheese medallions, and a
cherry zinfandel vinaigrette, it was very good. For the entrée I had to try one
of their steaks, simply because of how it was labeled on the menu, Canton’s
best strip steak with a house steak butter, vegetable, and potato. I’m not sure
if it was the best in Canton as I hadn’t been to every restaurant in Canton,
but it tasted like a regular steak to me.
Also just because it was funny, they had an asparagus soup special one night, and the garnish design, whoever came up with it made me laugh. I guess they were thinking about Colorado and the recent change to the drug laws, and this garnish was their way of supporting it lol
This Restaurant reminds me of:
Being that I worked here, I tried to give a fair review, no
bias, and the 91 restaurants were good compared to their sister Table Six, but
in the end it reminded me of a basic bistro restaurant that could have a lot
more potential if the chef’s stay away from the Food Network as sources for
recipes, so I would compare 91 to other places I’ve eaten such as Alioto’s Restaurant in San Francisco, and the Bistro at Biltmore in
Asheville, North Carolina.
Other Canton favorites:
Fruedy’s Bar and Grill by Samantha’s
Table Six
Flemings Prime Steakhouse, Akron
Cost of wines and other
alcoholic beverages in USD:
$70.00
Tasting Notes:
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Wine & Grape:
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Nose (Bouquet):
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Palette Experience:
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78% Cabernet Sauvignon, 17% Merlot,
3% Petit Verdot, 1% Malbec, 1% Cabernet Franc. Bright,
smooth, and rich ruby color with captivating aromas of black currant, red
cherry, and spice are lifted out of the glass.
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The wine is inviting with a supple mouth-feel and
notes of cassis, dark chocolate and ripe berries. The
layers of complexity continue to develop throughout a silky finish. 19
months in 100% French oak, 30% new.
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Juicy peaches, pineapple and lime greet the nose, followed
by vanilla and cedar.
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Ripe tropical fruit and fig jam flood the lush, silky
palate. Soft spice, vanilla and nectarines mark the lengthy finish, while
fresh, mouthwatering acidity leaves you longing for another glass.
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Wine Regulatory:
Restaurant address:
1983 East Maple Street
Canton, OH 44720
Neighborhood:
North Canton
Cross streets:
Market Ave &
Frazer St. NW
GPS Coordinates:
Latitude: 40.876065
Longitude: -81.368579
Contact Information:
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Maître d, reservations:
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(330) 498-9191
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Website:
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Email:
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Online Reservations :
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Social Media:
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Hours:
Dinner:
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Monday
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5:00–9:30 pm
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Tuesday
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5:00–10:00 pm
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Wednesday
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5:00–10:00 pm
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Thursday
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5:00–10:00 pm
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Friday
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5:00–11:00 pm
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Saturday
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5:00–11:00 pm
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Sunday
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Closed
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Standard Time (GMT -5:00)
Proprietor / Manager:
Jamie Brown
Review by:
Chef Sean Overpeck (CFE)
in St. Emillion, France 2010
+(640x480).jpg)
Chef Sean cooks for soldiers in Afghanistan, 2012:
"Culinary perfection
consists not in doing extraordinary things, but in doing ordinary things
extraordinarily well."
TTFN
