So recently we got to try out a place we had never been. We’ve heard about it by reputation, but not advertisement – it doesn’t seem to get a lot of press that I have seen. But the Gibbet Hill Grill certainly deserves some press. I had heard about the place by word of mouth, but a gift certificate from my soccer team (thanks guys!) finally got us to go.

Gibbet Hill Grill (Groton, MA) isn’t in a highly-traveled area, so it isn’t going to get passer-by traffic. It is located on Route 40 just off Route 119 near Lawrence Academy, about an hour’s drive northwest of Boston, a few minutes outside of I-495. It’s menu is fashioned like an upscale steakhouse, such as Morton’s, but without the upscale prices. Located on farmland, it grows some of its own vegetables and herbs and also sources as much as it can from local farms, both in the local communities and in greater New England for what it can’t get locally. The seasonality of such will affect the various choices on the menu.

There are two parts to Gibbet Hill – the “Barn”, which is available for functions such as weddings, and the “Grill”, the main restaurant and bar. Neither is huge. I can’t tell you exactly how the Barn is adorned, but the Grill is styled as a dressed-up barn house (which it likely was), with dark wood and stone and a large stone chimney in the center of the dining area. There is also an upstairs seating area covering maybe one third of the lower area, along with a small bar (maybe 8 seats – didn’t count). Given the “countryside” setting, it would have been good to have more windows, but we were seated right across from a double-slider glass door that looked out onto the land as well as some boxes where they grow herbs. My only complaint about the seating – there were two two-tops along a short wall across from the doors, and we were seated at one – and the seats between the two tables were close enough together that one could not be seated or get up without striking the other.

We were on the early side for a weekday dinner (after years of getting up really early for work downtown, my meal schedule still tends to be on the early side), we didn’t expect a crowd – although when we walked in, it looked packed – but apparently almost everyone was there for a wedding rehearsal and were hanging at the bar before heading over to the Barn. There was I believe only one other table seated, and one that was seated just after us. A few more came in later.

A good dinner starts with good service, and GHG prides itself on that. The waitstaff were friendly and courteous, dressed professionally but with a friendly attitude. Our server, who said we could refer to her as “Red”, was ready when we were ready, was perfectly attentive, and asked us questions more than the requisite, “How is everything?” you get at any place – usually when your mouth is full. You don’t get, “How is the temperature of your steak?” at a Chili’s or Applebees. I did stump her momentarily on the beers on tap question, having to refer to her list for the final beer (Naragansett, which is totally forgettable – I ordered their house IPA made by an area brewery, which was a fairly typical dry-tasting IPA). We even heard another waiter apologize to the table next to us for having previously described the presentation of a particular item as being on a rectangular plate, when it turned out it wasn’t. Who worries about that level of detail?

To start with you get a bread basket, which contains a couple slices of a nice Italian-style bread, and a couple hunks of cornbread. The cornbread was the perfect consistency, soft and held together, not crumbly or grainy at all. Normally we might have asked for more, but we also ordered a cup of New England Clam Chowder each as well. The chowder was good – tasty, perhaps could have used more clam meat, but nice and creamy and good overall.

I had decided ahead of time that I would finally order a porterhouse steak. In all my meat-eating years, I had never ordered one, but I had the appetite for it today. GHG offers it on two sizes – 24oz and 32oz. I wasn’t totally crazy and opted for the 24oz, cooked medium rare. That’s another thing – as a kid, if I ordered meat cooked to order, I always chose well done. I don’t know why, but it seemed a good platform for ketchup. I eventually outgrew that and typically order medium, although if I am expecting a really good cut I might go medium rare – sans ketchup as well. I also chose the the garlic mashed red bliss potatoes and citrus-honey glazed carrots on the side.

Porterhouse steak from Gibbet Hill Grill, Groton, MA

The steak came on top of a fair portion of the mashed potatoes, as can be seen. I generally prefer that the sides be separate, as I typically enjoy their flavors separately, but it didn’t affect them as much as you might expect. The potatoes were good – you could actually taste the garlic, but I don’t think it was overbearing. If you don’t like garlic too much you may want to avoid. The carrots as you can see were yellow – I don’t know if that was the actual carrots, or how they were cooked. They could have used a little more cooking – I’m not a fan of al dente carrots.

As for the steak, not knowing how a medium rare porterhouse should look, at first I thought it was overcooked. The first several cuts from either side were brown throughout, but they turned out to be perfectly juicy and tender, just as was the rest of the steak, which did get redder towards the bone with the meat immediately adjacent to the bone being near rare – but the effort to remove that meat was generally higher than the return so it didn’t really matter. I ate mostly the tenderloin side first, followed by the strip. I only noticed a slight difference between the two, both being tasty on their own without needing any sort of sauces. I had considered retaining the remaining butter from the bread to top the steak but forgot and it had been removed, but as it turns out the flavor and the moisture were fine with just a slight saltiness (which is more to my liking anyways).

T ordered the sirloin tips (medium) also with the carrots and onion rings. The sirloin tips were tasty, cooked perfectly and tender. She had the same problem with the carrots, lacking flavor even with added salt. The onion rings were very good – nothing specifically that could be called out on them, just tasty.

We very seldom order dessert, so we left it there and headed off to Lowell for a date-night movie.

We will certainly be returning here again, especially when we get a hankering for a good steak (the ribeye is next in my sights, or the weekend-only prime rib) along with some of the appetizers such as the red wine braised short ribs or the crab dip. It’s nice to have someplace of this quality without needing a line of credit…

A few weeks ago we started getting WMFP again (in the Boston area, formerly UHF 62 and I believe currently DTV 18.1), after it had joined RTV. Now I can watch Emergency! and Adam-12 all over again. For those unfamiliar with these shows, they were often more real that a lot of the reality fare nowadays. Especially with Emergency! hows weren’t necessarily edited for dramatic effect – characters appear to be really doing the tasks they are shown doing – fighting fires, performing rescues – I even noticed in an episode recently one of the doctors changing the recording tape for the calls – why would they even show that? That’s valuable advertiser time nowadays. But it made it real…in a way that I don’t think is even possible with today’s TV. It’s too bad that there will probably be nothing like Emergency! again.

Now, the antics on Adam-12 would probably get Reed and Milloy indefinitely suspended a hundred times over nowadays…

Fries are nothing more than edible utensils for condiments. As such, surface area is the most important aspect. Steak fries have a lower surface area to volume ratio, and therefore are not as useful. There is less for the condiments to stick to.

And condiments are defined as salt, ketchup and grease (preferably of the oft-banned trans fat variety). I’ll accept Malt Vinegar from the Brits though.

First off, I’m on the national Do Not Call list. So these calls are in violation of that. However, most of the time the calls are coming from “Out Of Area”, and no number displayed, so I can’t report them.

Even if you hang up on them, the line isn’t freed immediately. Pick up the line again, and its still there, still giving its spiel. I believe systems that do not disconnect immediately are illegal, as it prevents me from being able to make a phone call in an emergency.

And I love how the call is from my “credit card company”. They don’t say which one, and they are definitely not one of mine. But if I press 1, guess what? I’ve now created a business relationship with whatever telemarketer is on the other end, and you can be you’ll still be getting those calls.

How do you stop these? Does anyone know how to get the number that’s calling? Perhaps some harrassment lawsuits might slow them down.

Update [2/5]: I e-mailed. They said to call. I called. They said to fax…we’ll see…

Update [2/23]: Called again today…they apparently “received my request into the system” last week. Only took them 10 days from when I faxed. Supposedly I’m qualified now, but it can be another 5 weeks to receive the discs. We’ll see…

Update [3/30]: 5 weeks TO THE DAY of my phone call, the movies arrived – even though a few days ago the web site still listed me as unqualified. At least now I have a couple movies I actually want to watch…

I had thus far stayed away from HD because 1) I didn’t see a need – I had a 32″ behemoth Toshiba CRT and a big entertainment center that wouldn’t take a big flat panel, and I had DirecTV – which to get HD I’d probably have to cut down another tree to get the line to the satellites. Plus, I had three hacked DirecTV TiVos which gave me all the features I wanted.

But DirecTV prices were going up and quality going down. They were compressing signals pretty badly to squeeze more in (because we all want more shopping channels apparently), and even their HD has been termed HD Lite, where they recompress the signal – not only in to MPEG4, which wouldn’t be so bad but none of my equipment supports, but also changing the horizontal resolution, which they claimed to be the same quality. Other than the work I put in to my TiVos, I wasn’t married to them.

So, Verizon’s FiOS TV service was available in my area for about a year. I already was an early adopter of the Internet service, but I didn’t jump at the TV since I didn’t have an HDTV to take advantage of it – but the price was definitely cheaper. So I worked some numbers, and for $6 LESS a month than what I paid DirecTV, I could get FiOS TV (which includes all HD channels they carry – not extra like with others), 4 cable cards (needed if I wanted to get two of the new TiVo HD units), and a standalone set top box. And that was before any bundle discounts that I didn’t know about! I already got phone and Internet – this would end up with HUGE savings! And lets just say my other alternative, Comcast, wasn’t even in the parking lot, never mind the ballpark.

Another factor – I had an old Series 1 TiVo that was on loan to my sister. It had lifetime service on it, so I didn’t have to pay any monthly fees, which TiVo didn’t offer any more. Well, they were offering a $199 transfer fee for moving the lifetime to a new TiVo HD…a price I’d recoup after just two years. Plus, a free year of service on my old unit, AND I could get another Tivo HD on a multi-unit discount for something like $6.95 a month. Honest-to-god, authentic TiVos with multi-room viewing and no hacks.

So, I started to pull the trigger. First, the TV and a new stand. I got the stand at Best Buy, but opted for a 47″ Toshiba 1080p LCD at Costco. Now, I wouldn’t be able to get Verizon hooked up before the World Series, and the Red Sox were playing, so I also picked up a Terk indoor directional antenna – it looked like ray gun from a 50′s SF show. Since it was temporary, I had it set up on a chair pointing in the relative direction of Boston. I’d REALLY need a directional roof antenna from where I live, but WFXT, which was showing the games, came in fine, at least if I didn’t walk in front of the antenna. Other stations would break up periodically. Good enough.

Now, walking around the TVs at your local BigBoxMart store and looking really doesn’t give you the full HD “picture”. They seem to use poor sources split too many times. That is, unless you go look at the super-duper sets in the special rooms. But even then, the ONLY way you are going to tell the difference would be with an analog set side-by-side with the same program (but via an SD source – even an HD source downconverted would look better than an SD source). But it looked decent in the store, and I knew with a proper source it should look better. Eventually, I’d get a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD as well to take advantage of the full 1080p resolution.

How could I tell when I got this home what the difference was like? I could see the grass on the field! I’m not talking about seeing the splotchy green areas – I mean, the blades of grass! I could see waves of water, instead of horizontal black and blue bars! I’d forgotten what a good signal looks like! Thanks, DirecTV! You’ve helped me appreciate HDTV more – and I don’t mean that in a kind way!

I also picked up a cheap 1080p upconvert Toshiba DVD player to use in place of my Playstation 2. I wasn’t ready to pick sides in the HD Format War yet, and I was already dropping a lot of money. Give me some time to recover, and Christmas was coming up. We threw in Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in the upconvert player – boy, what a difference!

I ordered two of the TiVo HDs (although only one would be hooked up to an HDTV for now), and when Verizon came we got it all set up with little problem. We reused the existing wiring (which allowed me to keep the DirecTV TiVos working in tandem for a while, since the new ones only needed one cable) – including an old RG59 running the length of the house to the bedroom. Since the FiOS signal is literally “hot”, with a few adjustments we were able to get the full signal to the bedroom without issue. The cablecard setup went without a hitch, although it was slow going. I did have to buy some attenuators and hook them up to the other Tivo HD (with the actual HDTV hookup) to “tone down” the signal level, as I was getting some breakup on a few of the higher HD channels. -6Db made a huge difference there.

One thing he had to do was because the regular Verizon set-top box needed to get Internet service via the cable (what’s called MoCA), the installer had to put in a Verizon ActionTec router between by own router and the Internet. I could probably just use the ActionTec, but I’ve got a Linksys running DD-WRT as my main gateway, and it works well with the wireless bridges which give service to the TiVos and Playstations, so I didn’t want to muck that up. It actually works fine.

So now I have all my locals in HD, a bunch of nationals (which are expanding this year to catch up with other providers), real TiVos, and for Christmas I chose sides and went with Blu-Ray via a Playstation 3 (which ironically was the cheapest Blu-Ray player). Fortunate since the War may be ending soon.

The only thing I really miss? TiVoWebPlus, which allowed me to access my DirecTV TiVos remotely to schedule, search, and even delete programs. It allowed me to clean up my TiVos easily. The new ones allow me to see what is on them, and even download the programs from them (for use with TiVoDesktop), but that’s it.

The new TiVo HD units also have a few quirks to be worked out in the software. They seem far more aggressive with Suggestions, and I have to reboot the one with the HDTV hookup periodically to clear up some stuttering when watching an HD program.

For instance, I was looking for a MicroSD memory card for my new mobile phone. I looked a couple weeks ago, and they wanted $69.99 less 10% for a 2GB card. That didn’t sound right – I checked online, and the same exact card was $25. Well, I checked back today, and it was the SAME price – but the discount was now 15%. I went to Costco and paid $24.

I looked at a 4GB USB thumb drive. They wanted $99 less 20%! Costco had a 3-pack of 2GB thumb drives for something like $45. If they think these discounts are going to clear merchandise, they are sadly mistaken – but I don’t think that’s their intent. As I was there, they were taking all the recordable media, etc. and taking them off the shelves. I think their intent is to liquidate wholesale to other retailers, and not provide any real value to consumers any more.