You might say Blue is bold and beautiful, but you would also have to say it's big. Big as in size, with a dining room that spills out onto a former porch area and now encompasses an outdoor patio, complete with a fire pit. Big with a banquet center that can hold 400 people and an upstairs space (under renovations during writing) geared toward corporate functions and lunches. Big describes an expansive menu that includes 19 appetizers, salads, flatbreads, entrees that aren't steakhouse-driven, and a separate bar/patio menu with its own attractions. Big as in its steaks, the smallest one you'll find is still a respectable six-ounce center cut filet. Big, too, in its wine list, with a 1,000-bottle inventory and 30 offerings by the glass. It's even big when it comes to its salt and pepper shakers—full-size, gorgeous Vic Firth ones (in blue, naturally) that would likely set you back a cool $100 for a set, were you to buy them on your own, retail.
You might not realize it, but it's been 10 years since the Candlelight Inn was transformed into Blue; though the anniversary isn't what prompted their recent renovation. Even though it was planned, the flooding of a retention pond behind the building forced owner George Paxos's hand to move on it sooner than planned. In about two short months the interior received a serious facelift, including new carpeting and furniture, for starters. Those changes are part of a more significant shift, one that Paxos describes as “making Blue more feminine.” He says this without laughing. It's not to say that it needs to be less about the steak, per se. It was time to make some changes. For example, the front patio is now a softer, quieter enclosed space off the main dining room. “We're constantly innovating. And I've been saying for years that steakhouses need to evolve. Things are different now,” says George, who's been operating restaurants in the Lehigh Valley since 1981, when he was part owner of the Candlelight Inn. People are back on red meat—that phase has long passed us—and diners are more adventurous than they used to be and more interested in smaller plates.
Blue's evolution looks like a larger menu, one that's designed by 35-year-old Corporate Chef Christopher Heath, who oversees all of the Paxos Group restaurant properties that locally include Blue and Melt. The new menu debuted in November 2011 with an extensive appetizer selection geared toward diners who like to order a mess of things and pass plates around and talk and drink. But consider yourself warned: the new menu is pages long—more like a well-designed small book—and will take you some time to pore over. The indecisive among us (hello!) both love and loathe these scenarios; there's a lot to choose from and much of it appetizing.
Consider that you can order one of a half dozen salads, as is, or with a protein of your choice such as grilled chicken or salmon, jumbo shrimp or lump crab cake, or filet mignon. Blue's raw bar is priced by the piece, so you're not locked into someone's idea of what seafood you should order. There's a special menu just for the bar and for the patio areas; don't miss the mini raw bar blue, with two enormous Blue shrimp, two little neck clams and two East Coast oysters, with traditional accompaniments. You'll also be able to share plates of their new flatbreads—baby spinach and artichoke, mozzarella and tomato (the closest to traditional pizza with the accompaniment of basil pesto), and the crowd-pleasing braised short rib, with pickled peppers and roasted garlic. The compulsory selection of fish, chicken and pasta rounds out the offerings. However, it's always a welcome addition when a cheese plate (domestic and imported, thanks) pops up on a menu. “There's something at every price point,” says George, from $1.25 (a single little neck clam on the half shell) to $46 (prime bone-in New York strip steak). “This menu has broadened our client base.” Heath concurs: “I've been surprised by how many vegetarians come in here,” Heath says. And one more thing. If you wake up late on Sunday dying for a hair-of-the-dog Bloody Mary (Blue offers two), spiced cider doughnuts or a salmon hash eggs Benedict, Blue now serves brunch.
The core of the business remains, as you can still order anything from a six-ounce center cut filet mignon ($27) to prime bone-in, 20-ounce New York strip steak ($46), along with a half or full rack of Australian lamb. However, nowadays you'll find a grass-fed steak on it, which made its debut with the new menu. You might argue that the steaks themselves don't need anything more to accompany them—they're treated with a three-pepper mix Heath concocted himself (white, black and Szechuan peppercorns), and that's certainly how Paxos' son, Dimitrios (a 25-year-old recent Lehigh finance grad who knows his way around spreadsheets) and dad both prefer their steaks. Blue offers a suite of six sauces ($2 each) to go with them, with classics such as red wine, béarnaise, peppercorn to horseradish cream, herb butter and (my favorite) a luscious ginger-soy butter that would make nearly anything it touches taste even better.
photo by john sterling ruth
George says “our vision has expanded,” and he found the right chef to bring those ideas to the plate. Heath's culinary training reflects the typical worldly chef polyglot kind of experience, but you can trace it back to his childhood. His propensity toward Asian flavors is undoubtedly a result of growing up with a Filipino mom and Bostonian grandmother, but his adolescence was itinerant, with time growing up in Arizona, New Mexico, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Funny enough, he got into cooking through desserts; his mom just couldn't make desserts, he says. Still, being exposed to different foods, such as baby corn, and cuisines such as Asian and Indian (and which no other kids knew), had a formative influence on his palate. In Asian cuisine, it's all about striking the flavor balance. Heath worked in restaurants as a teenager and received his training at L'Academie de Cuisine in Maryland, and helped open Café Bethesda North. Shortly thereafter, he worked in London at the French spot Le Pont de la Tour and the stylish Italian restaurant Sartoria, on Savile Row.
Like any chef worth the stitching on his pressed whites, he spent time in New York City, working with Chef Daniel Orr at the classic French restaurant La Grenouille, a collaboration that resulted in three-stars from The New York Times. He continued to work with Orr at Guastavino's, and then again as head chef at Orr's CuisinArt Resort and Spa in Anguilla. Heath left the white sand beaches in 2006 for the Lehigh Valley; he knew George was serious about changing the dining scene in the Valley when he found out George had contracted New York design firm Jeffrey Beers International for Melt. Heath came here and hasn't looked back. Still, it begs the question: why leave the Caribbean for the Lehigh Valley? (You know you're all wondering the same thing, as much as you may like it here.) “The pace here is somewhere between New York City and the Caribbean,” Heath says. Plus, when he met George, he realized how simpatico they were. “He's a man of action, so we're a good match,” Heath says.
Heath goes on to say that having access to Primo Produce, Paxos's wholesale food distribution arm, makes for a very different experience as a chef. For one, it immensely simplifies the ordering process, but it also means having access to a plethora of products. “We have food coming in here every day of the week, from all over the world, whether it's the big-eye tuna for our tuna tartar or Pacific swordfish,” he says. George puts it more directly: “We have 1,800 different products from all over the world,” plenty of which are from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
It's certainly a big job, managing two large restaurants, one formidable enough without having to quietly battle cancer: George has undergone six separate procedures for oral cancer in the past six years, including the most recent one in February, just a few months after the new Blue launched and before the event center reopened in April. He's now cancer-free, and credits the love (and hard work) of his wife, his daughter, Sophia and son, Dimitrios, as essential to his recovery. He wants to be the best, and win. “In business, winning to me is building a team of people that I'm blessed to have around me, especially the senior management. I couldn't be a luckier guy to have the kind of team around me that I do,” he says.
That luck extends, too, to the kitchen. “We're quite fortunate to have someone like him [Chef Heath] to head up the kitchen,” George says. And that same someone brings his self-described “worldly” approach to the cuisine both at Blue and Melt, where his love of Italian food comes through. “It's so intimate, simple and beautiful,” he says. But it really goes beyond that; if it's delicious, it's delicious. “I love good food, I love good flavors—I don't care what it is, what culture it comes from,” Heath says. “You can experience someone else's culture through food. It's really magical,” he says. Food can teach us a lot, provided we are hungry and want to learn, can't it?
photo by olaf starorypinski
Other Things You Should Know About Blue Grillhouse:
Blue Grillhouse & Event Center
4431 William Penn Hwy.
Easton
610.691.8400
bluegrillhouse.com
Hours:
Lunch: Mon.–Sat., 11 a.m.–4 p.m.;
Dinner: Mon.–Thurs., 4–10 p.m.;
Fri.–Sat. 4–11 p.m.;
Sun. 3–9 p.m. Sun. brunch 10 a.m.–3 p.m.
Reservations:
Recommended for weekends
Payment:
Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover
Parking:
Ample; large lot on site
What to Order:
Anything from the raw bar; flatbreads; New York Strip Steak, Grilled Salmon with Yukon Gold potatoes and grain mustard cream sauce, Grilled Big-Eye Tuna with ginger soy butter sauce and baby bok choy.
Specials:
Happy Hour, 5–7 p.m. features a special menu of six wines, six cocktails and six small plates, all $6 per piece, with selections such as the blue margarita (tequila, blue Curacao, pineapple juice, lime juice and Sprite), magenta moon (Chambord and champagne) a baby
spinach and artichoke dip with flatbread crackers, and fried honey calamari. A prix-fixe menu is available with three courses—appetizer, main and dessert—Sunday through Thursday, from $29, and changes every week with a rotating selection of new and standard menu items.
You might say Blue is bold and beautiful, but you would also have to say it's big. Big as in size, with a dining room that spills out onto a former porch area and now encompasses an outdoor patio, complete with a fire pit. Big with a banquet center that can hold 400 people and an upstairs space (under renovations during writing) geared toward corporate functions and lunches. Big describes an expansive menu that includes 19 appetizers, salads, flatbreads, entrees that aren't steakhouse-driven, and a separate bar/patio menu with its own attractions. Big as in its steaks, the smallest one you'll find is still a respectable six-ounce center cut filet. Big, too, in its wine list, with a 1,000-bottle inventory and 30 offerings by the glass. It's even big when it comes to its salt and pepper shakers—full-size, gorgeous Vic Firth ones (in blue, naturally) that would likely set you back a cool $100 for a set, were you to buy them on your own, retail.
You might not realize it, but it's been 10 years since the Candlelight Inn was transformed into Blue; though the anniversary isn't what prompted their recent renovation. Even though it was planned, the flooding of a retention pond behind the building forced owner George Paxos's hand to move on it sooner than planned. In about two short months the interior received a serious facelift, including new carpeting and furniture, for starters. Those changes are part of a more significant shift, one that Paxos describes as “making Blue more feminine.” He says this without laughing. It's not to say that it needs to be less about the steak, per se. It was time to make some changes. For example, the front patio is now a softer, quieter enclosed space off the main dining room. “We're constantly innovating. And I've been saying for years that steakhouses need to evolve. Things are different now,” says George, who's been operating restaurants in the Lehigh Valley since 1981, when he was part owner of the Candlelight Inn. People are back on red meat—that phase has long passed us—and diners are more adventurous than they used to be and more interested in smaller plates.
Blue's evolution looks like a larger menu, one that's designed by 35-year-old Corporate Chef Christopher Heath, who oversees all of the Paxos Group restaurant properties that locally include Blue and Melt. The new menu debuted in November 2011 with an extensive appetizer selection geared toward diners who like to order a mess of things and pass plates around and talk and drink. But consider yourself warned: the new menu is pages long—more like a well-designed small book—and will take you some time to pore over. The indecisive among us (hello!) both love and loathe these scenarios; there's a lot to choose from and much of it appetizing.
Consider that you can order one of a half dozen salads, as is, or with a protein of your choice such as grilled chicken or salmon, jumbo shrimp or lump crab cake, or filet mignon. Blue's raw bar is priced by the piece, so you're not locked into someone's idea of what seafood you should order. There's a special menu just for the bar and for the patio areas; don't miss the mini raw bar blue, with two enormous Blue shrimp, two little neck clams and two East Coast oysters, with traditional accompaniments. You'll also be able to share plates of their new flatbreads—baby spinach and artichoke, mozzarella and tomato (the closest to traditional pizza with the accompaniment of basil pesto), and the crowd-pleasing braised short rib, with pickled peppers and roasted garlic. The compulsory selection of fish, chicken and pasta rounds out the offerings. However, it's always a welcome addition when a cheese plate (domestic and imported, thanks) pops up on a menu. “There's something at every price point,” says George, from $1.25 (a single little neck clam on the half shell) to $46 (prime bone-in New York strip steak). “This menu has broadened our client base.” Heath concurs: “I've been surprised by how many vegetarians come in here,” Heath says. And one more thing. If you wake up late on Sunday dying for a hair-of-the-dog Bloody Mary (Blue offers two), spiced cider doughnuts or a salmon hash eggs Benedict, Blue now serves brunch.
The core of the business remains, as you can still order anything from a six-ounce center cut filet mignon ($27) to prime bone-in, 20-ounce New York strip steak ($46), along with a half or full rack of Australian lamb. However, nowadays you'll find a grass-fed steak on it, which made its debut with the new menu. You might argue that the steaks themselves don't need anything more to accompany them—they're treated with a three-pepper mix Heath concocted himself (white, black and Szechuan peppercorns), and that's certainly how Paxos' son, Dimitrios (a 25-year-old recent Lehigh finance grad who knows his way around spreadsheets) and dad both prefer their steaks. Blue offers a suite of six sauces ($2 each) to go with them, with classics such as red wine, béarnaise, peppercorn to horseradish cream, herb butter and (my favorite) a luscious ginger-soy butter that would make nearly anything it touches taste even better.
photo by john sterling ruth
George says “our vision has expanded,” and he found the right chef to bring those ideas to the plate. Heath's culinary training reflects the typical worldly chef polyglot kind of experience, but you can trace it back to his childhood. His propensity toward Asian flavors is undoubtedly a result of growing up with a Filipino mom and Bostonian grandmother, but his adolescence was itinerant, with time growing up in Arizona, New Mexico, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Funny enough, he got into cooking through desserts; his mom just couldn't make desserts, he says. Still, being exposed to different foods, such as baby corn, and cuisines such as Asian and Indian (and which no other kids knew), had a formative influence on his palate. In Asian cuisine, it's all about striking the flavor balance. Heath worked in restaurants as a teenager and received his training at L'Academie de Cuisine in Maryland, and helped open Café Bethesda North. Shortly thereafter, he worked in London at the French spot Le Pont de la Tour and the stylish Italian restaurant Sartoria, on Savile Row.
Like any chef worth the stitching on his pressed whites, he spent time in New York City, working with Chef Daniel Orr at the classic French restaurant La Grenouille, a collaboration that resulted in three-stars from The New York Times. He continued to work with Orr at Guastavino's, and then again as head chef at Orr's CuisinArt Resort and Spa in Anguilla. Heath left the white sand beaches in 2006 for the Lehigh Valley; he knew George was serious about changing the dining scene in the Valley when he found out George had contracted New York design firm Jeffrey Beers International for Melt. Heath came here and hasn't looked back. Still, it begs the question: why leave the Caribbean for the Lehigh Valley? (You know you're all wondering the same thing, as much as you may like it here.) “The pace here is somewhere between New York City and the Caribbean,” Heath says. Plus, when he met George, he realized how simpatico they were. “He's a man of action, so we're a good match,” Heath says.
Heath goes on to say that having access to Primo Produce, Paxos's wholesale food distribution arm, makes for a very different experience as a chef. For one, it immensely simplifies the ordering process, but it also means having access to a plethora of products. “We have food coming in here every day of the week, from all over the world, whether it's the big-eye tuna for our tuna tartar or Pacific swordfish,” he says. George puts it more directly: “We have 1,800 different products from all over the world,” plenty of which are from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
It's certainly a big job, managing two large restaurants, one formidable enough without having to quietly battle cancer: George has undergone six separate procedures for oral cancer in the past six years, including the most recent one in February, just a few months after the new Blue launched and before the event center reopened in April. He's now cancer-free, and credits the love (and hard work) of his wife, his daughter, Sophia and son, Dimitrios, as essential to his recovery. He wants to be the best, and win. “In business, winning to me is building a team of people that I'm blessed to have around me, especially the senior management. I couldn't be a luckier guy to have the kind of team around me that I do,” he says.
That luck extends, too, to the kitchen. “We're quite fortunate to have someone like him [Chef Heath] to head up the kitchen,” George says. And that same someone brings his self-described “worldly” approach to the cuisine both at Blue and Melt, where his love of Italian food comes through. “It's so intimate, simple and beautiful,” he says. But it really goes beyond that; if it's delicious, it's delicious. “I love good food, I love good flavors—I don't care what it is, what culture it comes from,” Heath says. “You can experience someone else's culture through food. It's really magical,” he says. Food can teach us a lot, provided we are hungry and want to learn, can't it?
photo by olaf starorypinski
Other Things You Should Know About Blue Grillhouse:
Blue Grillhouse & Event Center
4431 William Penn Hwy.
Easton
610.691.8400
bluegrillhouse.com
Hours:
Lunch: Mon.–Sat., 11 a.m.–4 p.m.;
Dinner: Mon.–Thurs., 4–10 p.m.;
Fri.–Sat. 4–11 p.m.;
Sun. 3–9 p.m. Sun. brunch 10 a.m.–3 p.m.
Reservations:
Recommended for weekends
Payment:
Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover
Parking:
Ample; large lot on site
What to Order:
Anything from the raw bar; flatbreads; New York Strip Steak, Grilled Salmon with Yukon Gold potatoes and grain mustard cream sauce, Grilled Big-Eye Tuna with ginger soy butter sauce and baby bok choy.
Specials:
Happy Hour, 5–7 p.m. features a special menu of six wines, six cocktails and six small plates, all $6 per piece, with selections such as the blue margarita (tequila, blue Curacao, pineapple juice, lime juice and Sprite), magenta moon (Chambord and champagne) a baby
spinach and artichoke dip with flatbread crackers, and fried honey calamari. A prix-fixe menu is available with three courses—appetizer, main and dessert—Sunday through Thursday, from $29, and changes every week with a rotating selection of new and standard menu items.
