The Diving Horse Restaurant Review

My wife, my parents, and I ate at The Diving Horse on Saturday night. The Diving Horse restaurant is one of the new additions to Avalon’s BYOB community and is just starting its second year of business. We made reservations during the week leading up to Saturday and the only times available were 5:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.. We chose 9:30 p.m., but if you want to eat at a certain time make sure to call for reservations early.

When we first arrived the Hahn wine we brought with us was the only good thing about the restaurant. It's a small eating area and people are packed in, so the noise level is naturally loud. On top of the conversational noise there was rock music playing at a volume more like a club than a pricey BYOB. The noise level was annoying and we couldn't hear the waitress when she told us the specials, but our seating made up for it. We had a window seat overlooking Dune Drive, Avalon’s main thoroughfare, and could see people walking by dressed up to go to The Princeton.

The second disappointment of the night was the menu. They have a special Steakhouse Night on Saturdays described as “prime meats hand selected by Pat LaFrieda.” My Dad and I had assumed that there would be numerous prime meats and we would be able to sample all of them. Not so. There is one meat selected every Saturday night and the restaurant only orders 25 of them. This week’s steak was a 12 ounce filet mignon, but there was nothing special about its $54 price. With our hearts set on prime meats we had to start from scratch in deciding what to eat.

I’m unhappy when a restaurant tries to change the bread experience. At the Diving Horse a server brings around a basket of bread and serves each person with one small slice and a community butter. The server described the butter, but we couldn’t hear him over the noise so we just called it “red butter.” It was delicious. I will frequently eat two or three pieces of bread before dinner and I felt gluttonous when I had to ask the waitress for “another round of bread, please.”

All of the night’s disappointments were forgotten when the food arrived. Though it is pricey, the food was outstanding. Before the food came out my Mom said, “I’m glad we’re trying this, but I would never come back.” After dinner she was talking about what she’ll order next time.

For appetizers we tried Steamed Blue Bay Mussels, Gazpacho, and Ballotine de Quail. Though I forgot to take pictures before we ate, the photos of our empty plates in the slideshow can show what we thought of the food.

The mussels were good, but no different from mussels ordered anywhere else. Until the Diving Horse I never had the opportunity to try the other appetizers. The Gazpacho was poured over watermelon and tasted like summer. It looked like tomato soup, but it tasted like a light, fruity, less spicy bloody mary. The Ballotine de Quail was like a quail crabcake stuffed with sausage. The taste was phenomenal, but with only two small cakes it was not enough to be filling.

For the main course my Dad and I had the Roasted Chicken Breast, my wife Shauna had the Hudson Canyon Scallops, and my Mom had the NY “Butcher’s Wife” Cut of steak. We all tried each other’s meals and it was all fantastic. If you have had chicken breast, scallops, or steak before, multiply the taste by 100 and that’s how our entrees tasted. The portions weren’t huge, but they were filling. The Diving Horse is one of the few BYOBs I’ve been to where I didn’t feel bloated the next day from overeating. Nobody had leftovers to bring home, so don’t expect to make two meals out of this experience.

The dessert menu has some good choices and we were all excited about the “Kit Kat,” a large Kit-Kat served on top of chocolate and peanut butter. The excitement ended when the couple next to us ordered the “Kit Kat” and it was tiny. It looked delicious, but for $40 we could have gotten Wawa desserts and still had some leftover, so that’s what we did.

After our stop at Wawa we went home and enjoyed Jack & Jill ice cream sandwiches, Ben & Jerry’s Boston Cream Pie, and Ben & Jerry’s Cheesecake Brownie far more than we would have enjoyed the Kit-Kat.

I give the Diving Horse 4 out of 5 stars and would recommend it to my friends, but I would warn them about the prices before my recommendation.

If you are unable to see the slideshow, please click here.