Overwood Wood Fired American Kitchen

So, my husband and I took a trip out to Northern Virginia today, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to try a new restaurant. We are trying to cut down on our dining expenses, so we chose to go to Overwood Wood Fired American Kitchen (220 North Lee Street, Alexandria, VA 22314), which from the outside, looked like it wouldn't be too expensive. The ambience was a nice hodgepodge. There were flat panel TVs for the sports lover against the backdrop of a warm interior to save the restaurant from having a sports bar atmosphere. It looked kid- friendly as well. Also, if you sit in the back of the restaurant, you have a view of the open kitchen and some nice wooden wine cases. The food was pretty good overall, but as discussed below, it was not the place to go if you are looking to eat on a budget. That's the last time I'll ever take TVs showing sports to mean cheaper food. On a scale of 1 to 5, I would give it a 3.75. I know that I'm splitting hairs here, and most reviewers give half-points and don't go as far as quarter-points, but I was conflicted. Maybe I'd give it a 4 if it were food alone and I wasn't considering bang for the buck. Oh screw it. Just read. You can make your own assessment based on the lengthy detailed explanation. We skipped appetizers (again trying to save $$). There were some that looked interesting. I would have liked to have tried the fried green tomatoes, for one. We only ordered entrees. When ordering, I realized that we should not have judged the restaurant by its outside appearance. We thought it would be a bit cheaper, but most of the entrees aside from the burger option were $14 or over. I think that there was meatloaf for cheaper, but it had veal in it, and even I, the carnivore that I am, will not eat veal because I think that it's mean. I ordered the steak salad, which was $14.95, and my husband ordered cavatelli with sausage for $17.95 (a special and not on the regular menu). My steak salad was good. The steak was yummy with a nice texture and tasted like it had been lightly marinated. The salad contained crispy potato strings, standard field greends, grape tomatoes, a bleu cheese, and a decent ranch dressing. Nothing out of the ordinary, but still tasty. My husband's pasta dish was good as well. The pasta was perfectly cooked with a slightly spicy sausage and nice tomato-based sauce. It was accompanied by a large piece of crispy bread -- almost the consistency of a crouton. Pricewise, the salad was probably about right because of the quality of the meat. $17.95 for the pasta was a bit much. The portion was not especially large, and I don't think that it's justified to charge that much for sausage and pasta in a tomato sauce. We ordered dessert because we were slightly hungry after entrees. There were a lot of interesting options -- a double chocolate cheesecake, Elvis Pie (oreo crust, bananas, peanutbutter -- obviously in homage to Elvis's love of peanutbutter and banana sandwiches), and a few others. We selected the brownie sundae, which was pretty good. The brownie was served warm and had the perfect amount of moistness. For an interesting twist, the brownie was topped with two scoops of ice cream -- one chocolate and one vanilla, topped again with caramel sauce. The ice cream was high-quality, and the sundae was good overall. I decided to do the coffee test here. THE COFFEE WAS EXCELLENT!!!!! The restaurant uses coffee from local company M.E. Swing, which I frequented when I worked near the D.C. location. It was the perfect strength and not just good for restaurant coffee. On a scale of 1 to 4 mugs, I give it 4 full mugs! So, the upshot is that I would go back, but probably not that often because the price. Other good things were the interesting-shaped glasses, the pretty white coffee mugs, and the conveniently-placed coathooks on the booths.