Century Bar & Grill

The Century Bar & Grill is located on the ground floor of the beautifully remodeled 1928 Holland Hotel. The long bar in the restaurant’s front room overlooks the busy sidewalk via an expanse of windows, and the whole place hums with warm energy. Vintage Western paintings and an iron chandelier boasting antique electrical insulators add to the eclectic ambiance. Seated in a booth facing the open kitchen, we enjoyed an appetizer of grilled quail in sour cherry sauce before digging into a salad adorned with pepitas, crumbled goat cheese, and Texas ruby-red grapefruit sections. Then came chef Alex Acosta’s pièce de résistance, his version of chicken-fried steak, a tenderized, battered, and fried sirloin steak dressed in a chorizo gravy studded with corn kernels and jalapeño bits. This delighted us both, even as much as the seared beef tenderloin, which was served atop a bed of creamy cabbage and topped with grilled asparagus.