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Red Clay Restaurant serves seafood, steaks and pasta.

Wade Anderson | Special to The Roanoke Times

Red Clay Restaurant

• Menu: Seafood, steaks, pasta and poultry
• Where: 65 N. Main St., Rocky Mount
• Prices: Lunch: $6 to $8; Dinner: $11 to $27
• Hours: Lunch: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Sunday
• Dinner: 4 to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 4 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday
• Soda products: Coca-Cola
• Alcohol? Beer and wine; liquor pending
• Plastic? All major credit cards accepted
• Smoking? No
• Takeout? Yes
• Delivery? No
• Reservations? No
• Kid friendly? Highchairs and booster seats available
• Handicapped accessible? The Blue Ridge Independent Living Center did not review this restaurant.
• Patio seating? No, but planned
• Wireless Internet? Yes
• Live music? No
• Vegetarian dishes? No
• Call: (540) 482-0020
• Fax: (540) 482-0022
• On the Net: www.redclayrestaurant.net

A new restaurant opened in November in Rocky Mount with the hopes of serving residents of Franklin and Henry counties as well as folks from Smith Mountain Lake and Roanoke. Red Clay offers a varied menu with steak, seafood, chicken and pasta. We made two trips to see if it was worth the drive. On the first visit, my wife graciously agreed to let me mix work with pleasure by going to Red Clay for dinner on her birthday. My second visit was an outing for a late weekend lunch with my wife and 16-month-old daughter. The two visits couldn't have been more different.

THE VIBE

The paint in the beautiful dining room is technically known as "circus orange" but in appearance more closely resembles, in the dim light, the color of red clay. The rich, dark wooden booths, along with water sculptures, decorative mirrors and a clock add a more formal and refined look to the restaurant.

The ornate surroundings glow in the soft lighting used at dinner, though the lights shine more brightly at lunch. The restroom is wrapped in luxurious tile and water spills from an ultra-modern, disc-shaped faucet.

Don't let the nice trappings fool you, though. Patrons' dress at this casual eatery runs the gamut from jeans to jackets and ties.

LUNCH

Upon being seated, we were quickly greeted by a very pleasant waiter who immediately played with our toddler, much to her delight. We asked for some recommendations, and he quickly rattled off a few suggestions, eventually steering me toward a French dip ($8) with seasoned french fries. My wife opted for the beef pot pie ($6.50), and because we were starving, we ordered some sinful but delicious fried jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese ($5). Noting our hunger, the waiter helpfully suggested that my wife order a salad because the pot pie was not a large entree.

Our Athens salads ($3) consisted of romaine lettuce, onions, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and bleu cheese. The vegetables in our excellent salads were fresh, crisp and cold, and my honey-mustard dressing was thick and rich.

My wife's beef pot pie was delightfully gratifying, with green beans, carrots, corn and ample chunks of beef swimming in a rich broth capped by flaky phyllo dough.

The French dip had thinly sliced beef and melted provolone piled on Red Clay's freshly baked bread. The beef was tasty and tender with just the right amount of fat for such a classic sandwich. There was au jus for dipping and crunchy, well-seasoned fries. One surprise was the small ramekin of purplish dipping sauce that I quickly determined was some sort of horseradish sauce, but I had to beg the waiter to divulge what ingredient conferred the curious, somewhat unappetizing, color. I never would have guessed it was beets.

DINNER

The moneyed look of Red Clay's interior, along with main entrees priced from $11 to $27, create loftier expectations for dinner. But while Red Clay's lunch excelled, its dinner faltered.

My wife and I started with two appetizers, crab spring rolls ($7) with fiery fruit salsa and almond-dusted shrimp with fruit salsa and citrus vinaigrette ($9). The spring rolls were flaky with a distinct crab taste that was even better when dipped in the accompanying teriyaki sauce. The shrimp, however, were illusory -- by looking at them you would expect the outer shell to be crispy, but instead they were doughy with far too much breading and too little flavor, even when drenched in the citrus vinaigrette.

The 12-ounce rib-eye ($19) my wife ordered had good flavor, though it was a little on the fatty side, even for a rib-eye. She chose the mashed potatoes, which at Red Clay are a combination of Idaho white potatoes and sweet potatoes. Although she didn't really care for them, I liked the white potato taste with just a hint of sweetness.

I had a difficult time deciding what to order but finally settled on grouper ($15) because, unlike salmon and tuna, you don't often see it on restaurant menus. In high-end restaurants, a grouper fillet will often be thick with a flaky alabaster flesh. This scrawny, pale fillet disappointed. My first bite of the grouper tasted pungently fishy -- an indication that the grouper might not be terribly fresh. The sweet potato fries, however, were delicious, with a little salt and the perfect crunch that is sometimes difficult to achieve with sweet potatoes. Both the steak and the grouper came with delicious, delectable steamed vegetables.

Using my wife's birthday as an excuse to stray from my diet, I selected a piece of rich Oreo cheesecake ($5) for dessert. Although the cheesecake is made in-house, the decorative chocolate around the cheesecake had solidified and was difficult to eat. That, along with the speed with which it was retrieved by our server, made it apparent that it was sliced ahead of time and stacked in a cooler. This suspicion was later confirmed by our server (see below). Our coffee was too weakly brewed.

THE SERVICE

At lunch, the service was superb. My glass was always quickly refilled, and our amiable waiter even entertained our daughter on several occasions. He seemed genuinely knowledgeable about the menu and made helpful suggestions.

The service at dinner, however, was fleeting and cold. The server looked as though she had worked a double shift with too few breaks. While pleasant overall, she would appear at our table as if it were an unscheduled stop en route to some other destination. After we finished our entrees, she asked if we wanted the check; we had to request dessert and coffee. We then had to ask that she bring the dessert tray to our table as we had seen the other servers do. Finally, while removing my dessert plate, she exclaimed that there was something "nasty" on the underside of the plate that "must be from the other desserts!"

THE BOTTOM LINE

I try to judge restaurants against the segment in which they compete. It would be unfair to compare a casual eatery against Roanoke's finest dining establishment, for instance -- the expectations are different. Red Clay is clearly comfortable with itself at lunch (and you can order from the full menu all day). But at night, Red Clay seems to suffer from an identity crisis. One person can eat steak or rack of lamb while the person at the next table scarfs down buffalo wings and burgers.

At lunch, the quality of the food befits the price, but the $80 check at dinner far surpassed the quality of the meal.