New At Morton's Cincinnati

Those familiar with this blog know that we only do reviews or make notes on things that we actually get sent to us to review in person. We were fortunate enough to be invited to the Morton’s in downtown Cincinnati to try some of their new menu items (see post of July 7.)

I took my friend, also named Steve, who is a big foodie and extremely honest. We were brought five appetizers:

1. Crab Cake BLTs bar bite:
Three 1.5-ounce mini crab cakes served on mini burger buns with mustard mayonnaise and topped with lettuce, tomato and crispy bacon.

This was a hit. The crabmeat was sweet and the little cake had a nice caramelized top to give it a little crunch. The bacon was indeed crispy, but didn’t have much flavor. But that’s OK as the crab cake is what should shine on this dish anyway. The buns were soft and we felt this worked very well.

2. Prime Beef Sliders.
The inspiration for the previous dish, this really is a much more difficult dish to pull off. As simple as a slider sounds, it is very difficult to not produce a miniature hockey puck for the burger. Indeed while all the flavors meshed well, two of the three burgers were dry/overcooked.

3. Smoked Salmon Pizza bar bite:
Smoked salmon with capers and purple onion layered on a warm crust with dill and sour cream.
Honestly, I really don’t like salmon at all, but found this to be an edible dish as the fish was quite mild. I found it to have a few too many capers, but my foodie friend enjoyed it immensely. Again, considering I don’t like salmon, if you do, you should really enjoy it.

4. Steak Fries side dish:
A new version of an old Morton’s favorite, tweaked a bit to keep things interesting.
Basically the fries were topped with blue cheese and some peppery spices. I found the blue cheese a bit overwhelming as did my friend, but said that dipping them in ketchup actually improved the taste for him.

5. Onion Rings side dish or appetizer:
Ten ounces of crispy deliciousness, served in a hot baker’s dish with Thai cream sauce and ketchup on the side.
The Thai sauce is the new addition here. There was one reception lukewarm and one reception enthusiastic to the sauce, but two very hearty receptions for the rings themselves.

We were seated in Bar 12•21 which like every eating establishment in the Queen City is thankfully smoke free. The service was superb and management went out of their way to answer any and all questions as well as make our experience enjoyable.

Definitely check out the happy hour at 12•21 as the dishes mentioned here are discounted substantially around the end of the workday. So if you can’t stay for a dry aged steak, you can bring your friends after work and gorge on the great new variety of small bite delicacies!