Riverwalk Grill: a blast from the past
If you're of a certain age and want someplace comfy and nostalgic for dinner, have we got a restaurant for you! The new Riverwalk Grill in Elk Rapids will keep you well within your comfort zone where you need never stray beyond prime rib or fried perch. Anyone who longs for the restaurant food of LBJ's day will adore this place right down to the potato skins and sour cream.

Actually, the Riverwalk Grill isn't really new. It's the former Elk River Inn with a new owner and some new (and very attractive) clothes. But the menu is so well broken-in that it even has the words "surf" and "turf" in its logo. There must be a powerful appetite for this in and around Elk Rapids, too, because the Riverwalk has been packin' 'em in ever since it opened in mid-August.

The reason we reckon it's the nostalgia that packs 'em in is that it can't possibly be the service. Although the young staff has all the eager-to-please likeability of a box full of warm puppies, it's about as well trained, too. On our last trip we went through an entire meal without any of the "fresh baked" bread the menu promises, and without water despite repeated requests. In all fairness, however, we only had to ask twice to get horseradish, and our server did apologize for bringing our entrees about two minutes after serving salad. ("Oops!" she said brightly as she plunked down our dinners, "I guess these are a little early!")

She was so disarmingly honest that when we asked where the "home made" Key lime pie came from, she said, "We get it from Sysco." Such forthright candor might be part of the game plan, however. When a neighbor of ours recently complained that her chicken salad didn't seem fresh, the server checked in the kitchen and returned to report, "They said they make it every other day."

So maybe the folks who've been packing themselves into the Riverwalk just don't care about nuances like water and bread, or home-made or fresh, as long as they can get some good prime rib or the parmesan whitefish that was on the Elk River Inn menu for so long.

Lord knows, the prime rib we had was certainly good. No, make that "outstanding." It was thick, tender, juicy, just as rare as we wanted, and awash in a generous pool of what restaurants like to call "jus." We had the "queen" cut for $15.95 (we doubt we'd have been able to finish the $17.95 "king" version). Combined with a mountainous heap of garlic-smashed, skin-on spuds, it was enough to satisfy any old-fashioned, meat-and-potatoes kind of guy.

Our other dinner was fried perch. We had the regular-menu version at $12.95. Even though the all-you-can-eat special was only a buck more, our frugality was amply rewarded by more perch than we could have eaten even if it had been crisp and well seasoned, instead of limp and bland. It, too, came with mashed potatoes, and with vegetables that had all the flavor of frozen, including green beans, broccoli, and some pale orange things we tentatively identified as either carrot or zucchini. All things considered, the perch dinner was not something we'd order again.

The salad that our entrees so rudely interrupted was pretty good, too--chopped romaine with onion, croutons, tomato. It came with a ranch dressing that the server said they make themselves, and it's amazing how much it tasted like the Good Seasons packet version Mom sometimes uses.

Riverwalk's menu isn't all steaks, ribs, fish and chicken. The appetizers include Maryland crab cakes ("homemade daily" with "secret" spices), steamed mussels with roasted garlic and butter, chicken wings, shrimp cocktail, and even clam chowder. And if you're just a thoroughly modern diner seeking something that went mainstream after, say, Watergate, you can try the $15.95 entrée of yellowfin tuna on spinach fettucine with "tequila lime" sauce.

As Northern Michigan prices go, Riverwalk isn't exactly outrageous; they have pastas for $13 or $14 and most other dinners run $11-18, including salad, potatoes and vegetables, and sometimes bread. If you go wild, however, and add surf to your turf for $12 or 15 more, dinner could get downright pricey. We'll just say that for the $50 we invested in two dinners with two glasses of wine and $5 worth of food-jobber's pie, we at least expected better service, if not something that was actually home made.

DATA: Riverwalk Grill, US-31 N and Ames Street (at the bridge), Elk Rapids; 231-264-5655.