Glen Ellen Inn Oyster Grill & Martini Bar

Glen Ellen Inn Oyster Grill & Martini Bar Restaurant Review:

Romance is alive and well at this sweetheart of a restaurant tucked into Glen Ellen. The logo gives it away: a silhouetted couple leaning in for a kiss across a tabletop, and it pervades right down to home-style dill biscuits with a pat of butter embedded with a leaf heart. Naturally, begin with a martini from a tipsy list and oysters to suit your whims---raw, grilled and-or fried. Generous first courses include a calamari tempura haystack that marries ginger and tropical fruit, Dungeness crab pot stickers with leek cream you’ll dab clean, or arugula with poached pear and blackberry vinaigrette. There’s an old-fashioned elegance about the mains, though here it’s not tired, much like a classic movie that feels written for today. Consider salmon in puff pastry, pasta surf ‘n’ turf or lamb pot-au-feu. Squeeze in desserts somehow, like a chili-chocolate brownie meringue playing a spicy-sweet tug of war, or pumpkin baked Alaska. Doting servers rekindle the notion that dinner out for any reason is a celebration.