Mildred's Big City Food

3445 W University Ave
Gainesville, FL 32607-2402
(352) 371-1711

1.5 Thumbs up (WAAAAY overpriced and overrated).

Price Range: this is one of the most expensive restaurants in Gainesville. Each dish easily costs between 16 and 30 dollars.

In earlier posts, I have talked about "Gainesville Gourmet," or "Faux Fancy." Both terms succinctly define the observation that "high-end" restaurants in this town are nothing more than mediocre restaurants with high prices, fancy decor, and nothing but hype to back up their food. Mildreds is the epitome of "Faux Fancy," the zenith of the pretension scale, the lowest cost to quality ratio that there could be in town. They are all hype and no substance. Don't get me wrong, the food isn't bad. It's just nothing special.

I ate a sampling of multiple dishes, including many meat based meals, to reach this conclusion.

To start, I had the spinach, goat cheese, pistachio and persimmon saladThe first thing I noticed was that the dressing was way too strong. If you're going to include several unusual items in your salad (especially the subtly unique flavor of persimmon), you can't overload us on the salad dressing. It was very flavorful, but a bit over the top. The spinach was extremely large and thick, making for a very chewy texture. It wasn't bad, just unusual.

Someone else in our party got a salad that included "dried fruit" which just turned out to be raisins.

For the entrees, we sampled the menu quite thoroughly.

One dish was pan seared grouper with spinach and lemon risotto.According to the meal's eater, "The grouper was great, totally fine and crispy. There was no sauce on it, but it was good and the way I like it (light fried/seared fish). The risotto was really not good. The rice wasn't cooked long enough and it wasn't creamy. I've made risotto twice before and it's been better than that." In my opinion, after sampling the fish myself, it was very flavorless and boring. Combined with the miserable risotto, this dish was aesthetically pleasing, but tasted like a dud.

Another meal was the duck with glazed chestnuts. According to the meal's eater, "The glazed chestnuts were surprisingly good. The duck was fine, it was duck. I was not impressed. It wasn't bad, but nothing special." In my opinion, the duck was quite gamey. It actually tasted stinky to me. I didn't try the chestnuts.

I had the burger. I don't eat beef more than once every 6 months or so, but I do know that Mildred's serves local, grass-fed beef (along with as many other local ingredients as they can across the whole menu). I felt the need for meat tonight and this was honestly the only reason I suggested Mildred's. It was a good burger and the fries were tasty, although oversalted.

The final meal, which I didn't photograph was the pork chop with bacon mac-n-cheese. According to the eater, "It was like they took 3 different dishes and put them together. The flavors didn't go together at all. It was so weird. The pork chop had a barbeque sauce that bordered on teriyaki. Then there was weird mac n cheese with bacon and steamed veggies with a butter sauce. It was a very strange combination of 3 completely different sauces that you wouldnt put on the same dish. It was as if the chef didn't think of how the elements of the meal would go together." I personally, didn't try this dish, so I can't add or detract from that.

I also tried someone's Pumpkin Bisque, which was quite delicious.

Overall, with 7 people eating at the same table, none of us were impressed. The price tag was quite high (around 25/person without drinks). I don't mind paying 25 dollars for a meal, and honestly don't consider it terribly much money for a great meal. It's just that no one had a great meal. Easily, the best item was the burger, which is a weak statement.

If the place didn't put themselves out there at a high end/gourmet level, I wouldn't have been so harsh in this review. They call themselves "big city food," but unfortunately, the biggest city any of these chef's has been to is Gainesville, FL.