Print edition: 
Hereford House, the restaurant that late last year replaced Palomino Grill in Andover's Terradyne Country Club, has almost everything a fan of fine dining could want — great service, gorgeous atmosphere and lots of steak and fine wine.
The food, however, isn't always what the ambiance and price points suggest it might be.
Wichita's Hereford House is part of a chain that also includes four Hereford Houses in the Kansas City area.
Restaurateur Mike Issa, who owned the Italian Garden at 21st and Tyler until it closed in August, operates the restaurant. It opened in early December, and despite its location in Andover's upscale country club, it's open to the public, just like its Palomino predecessor.
ON THE MENU: The local Hereford House menu is identical to the menus at the Kansas City restaurants, only with the addition of a locally invented tuna dish.
The dinner menu features standard appetizers, soups, salads and sandwiches plus a wide array of steaks, chops and seafood entrees.
A pared-down (but still quite large, and significantly less expensive) lunch menu offers steaks, burgers, salads and sandwiches as well as entrees such as meat loaf and beef stroganoff. There's a rotating list of daily lunch specials, too.
DON'T-MISS DISHES: Our expectations for our pricey dinner at Hereford House might have been a bit too high. But we left feeling like we'd paid a lot of money for food that was more on par with a standard steak house chain.
Without those culinary disappointments, though, the entire experience would have been top-rate. The multilevel dining room — all leather, dark woods, dim lighting and golf-course views — is among the most beautiful in the Wichita area.
The servers also had a fine-dining air about them — competent and accommodating without being too intrusive.
And we could spend hours in the gorgeous, fireplace-appointed bar sipping cocktails and red wine from dramatically large stemware.
There were some food-related highlights. Our steak Oscar— a six-ounce filet topped with a pan-seared crab cake and bearnaise sauce — was cooked exactly to our medium rare specifications, and the crab cake was substantial without being too intrusive. It was $34.95, served with a choice of salad or soup and one side dish.
We also ordered, at our waiter's recommendation, the bone-in ribeye ($32.95). It was big and the meat was good, though it lacked seasoning.
Our non-steak selections included a double bone pork chop ($19.95), which was hickory-grilled and served with an apple chutney. The flavors were good — the smokiness of the chop mixed with the sweet tartness of the chutney. But the extra-thick cut of pork was overdone and dry.
We fared better during a lunch visit, where the food was more consistent and the prices more in-line. Though the spaghetti and meatballs lunch special ($9.95 with salad and bread) was way under-seasoned, we enjoyed the meat loaf, glazed with a delectably smoky ketchup and served with a side of mashed potatoes. It was a large serving for $9.95 and came with a salad, side and bread.
The steak sandwich ($8.95) also was good, piled with thin strips of roasted sirloin plus grilled onions and mushrooms. Still, it was inexplicably undressed — no mayo, no nothing. The dryness was easily resolved, though, when the waiter retrieved some horseradish mayo.
Desserts are an event at Hereford House. We were served a slab of decadent carrot cake, layered and layered again with white chocolate icing. It easily could have served four or more. Our second choice would have been the white chocolate bread pudding.
AMBIENCE: The dramatic dining room features half-circle booths on an upper tier, then two tiers of tables below. All seats face a fireplace and a wall full of windows overlooking Terradyne's golf course. (The effect is totally different during the day and at night but just as stunning either time.)
PRICE RANGE: Steaks are mostly $25 to $35 at dinner. Non-steak entrees average $20. Appetizers are $9 to $20.
At lunch, entrees are mostly $10. Burgers are $6 to $8. Sandwiches are mostly $8.
SERVICE: Servers were all efficient, professional and informed.
