Vine Brook Tavern Lexington

Vine Brook Tavern in Lexington took over the space vacated by Buca di Beppo in Lexington who took over what used to be Vinni T's for the longest time. Vine Brook Tavern opened in late 2012 and have got really mixed reviews on the web. The owners have a long list of successful restaurants behind them including opening restaurants for Michelin-rated chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten in Paris, London, and Mexico City. The chef, Chris Frothingham, is a protege of Todd English, not sure if that's a plus or a minus.

The interior is completely redone and looks nice with a big u-shaped bar downstairs. The only resemblance to the old place is the entrance-way leading up to the hostess station.

Upstairs looked nice too, with a separate bar. They opened up the floor to the right so it's now open to the ceiling.

The prices are on the expensive side but this is fine dining in the burbs and you should expect to pay. Here we have steak frites, sliced butchers sirloin, parmesan & arugula fries, Burgundy demi-glace, whiskey-onion butter. Not sure what the cut is, I have heard of butcher's tenderloin but never butchers sirloin. The steak comes out as ordered, but the compound butter on top was frozen and really didn't have a chance to melt on the rare steak. The Burgundy demi-glace was absent and putting the steak on top of the fries made them soggy and I suspect that the demi-glace was dumped in there as well. The fries were good but severely lacked salt and having not being salted immediately after being taken out of the fryer it was hard to get the coarse salt that was on the table to stick to them. The service was friendly and quick and of course you get linen napkins as expected. I'll be back, a neighboring table had the Fish and Chips and it looked really good.